Source: The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, VA, November 23, 2012
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
Winter dredging, a century-old method for harvesting blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay, has long been vilified for harming the ecosystem and undercutting crab populations. When it was banned four years ago, conservationists cheered — and crab abundance boomed.
Now, with stocks continuing to recover, pressures are mounting to again let Virginia watermen drag their comb-like dredges along the muddy bottom of the bay in search of hibernating crabs, most of them female.
While state regulators this week approved a fifth year of moratorium, they also pledged more than $130,000 toward a scientific study that hopes to prove once and for all how harmful winter dredging really is.
“Everyone has an opinion of the winter dredge fishery, but we need facts, not opinions,” said John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which suggested the study and has worked for months to organize it. “Let’s do our homework before we make any future decisions.”
To be overseen by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the study includes paying four watermen to dredge as many as 40 bushels of crabs a day, which they can sell to market for profit, while researchers and regulators observe the action on board work boats and take note of environmental damage.
The officials want to see, for example, how badly the steel-toothed dredges tear up bottom habitat of mud, sand and underwater grasses, and if they wastefully maim crabs in numbers that critics have long cited in building public opposition to the technique.
The study is set to begin next month and will run through March. Once results are tabulated, the state is expected to decide whether to reopen its part of the Chesapeake to winter dredging in 2013.
Most watermen are expecting a reprieve.
The ban “has been pretty devastating to some of us who make their living on the bay,” said James Dean Close, one of the four watermen chosen to participate in the study.
Close, who works out of Gwynn’s Island, instantly lost three months of income — dredging season had run from December through March — at a time the national economy was tanking.
And while the federal government approved $15 million in disaster aid to Virginia in 2008 because of the crab crisis, Close and other dredgers had difficulty making ends meet. Some sold their boats. Others found new jobs on shore.
They say sportsfishing and environmental groups have unfairly painted their industry as callous and hurtful, and they look forward to the study finally shedding some scientific light on dredging.
“You have mortality rates with any fishery,” Close said. “Ours has been totally exaggerated by these special-interest groups.”
One leading environmental group, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, supports the study as well as keeping the ban in place this year.
One of its scientists, Chris Moore, argues that if dredging is allowed next year, the state would be required to compensate for the loss of so many crabs with other, new conservation measures.
At its peak, the fleet of dredge boats that fought freezing temperatures and bad weather to earn a winter living used to number in the hundreds, centered in ports such as Norfolk, Cape Charles and Tangier Island.
By the time the ban was enacted, though, the fleet had dwindled to about 50 vessels.
Research indicates that crab populations increased soon after new harvest regulations were approved by the state marine commission in 2008, with most scientists citing the ban as perhaps the key measure.
This is because dredging collects mostly female crabs, which are buried in the mud and waiting to spawn much of the bay’s next generation the following spring. The theory goes: Fewer pregnant mothers, fewer babies, overall populations suffer.
The state of Maryland, which had urged Virginia for decades to stop winter dredging, is nervous about the pending study.
“We remain concerned about the potential re-opening of the winter dredge fishery, and would be interested in reviewing and discussing the results of this winter’s dredge fishery with you,” wrote Tom O’Connell, Maryland’s director of fisheries, in a letter last week.
The money for the study is coming out of funds paid by watermen for their commercial fishing licenses. The state marine commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to set aside at least $132,000 to finance 42 days of on-the-water research and crabbing.
The first day of work is slated for Dec. 17.