By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 3, 2008
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 3, 2008
The governors of Virginia and Maryland asked the federal government Friday to declare the Chesapeake Bay's crab population a disaster, in hope of winning congressional aid for struggling watermen and seafood merchants.
It is the first time a Virginia governor has requested such relief and comes less than a month after the state imposed strict rules intended to reduce the harvest of female crabs by 34 percent this year.
The economic impact of those rules on commercial crabbing interests is expected to be between $11 million and $15 million over the next three years, according to state calculations released Friday.
Maryland has proposed similar crab regulations to reach the same goal, as the two Bay states work together to stave off a possible collapse of the famous species, worth a combined $125 million a year.
"The blue crab fishery is in dire straits, and our watermen are enduring serious hardship," Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in a statement.
Kaine and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley sent separate letters Friday to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, urging him to assess the Bay's crab woes and officially declare a federal "fishery resource disaster."
If Gutierrez does so, Congress then could appropriate money for low-interest loans and other aid to hundreds of crabbers in Virginia and Maryland and to businesses that buy, sell and distribute crabmeat.
Congress also could choose not to help. Or Gutierrez could determine that the crisis was avoidable and recommend no action.
A decision could take weeks, state and federal officials said.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a leading environmental group, urged federal intervention.
"The blue crab crisis necessitates protecting not only the blue crab population but also the historic watermen culture," said Chris Moore, the foundation's science advocate in Virginia.
Moore said reducing pollution and improving water quality in the Bay are the long-term keys to rebuilding crab stocks and the crab industry.
Watermen similarly say environmental problems, and not their annual catches, are the chief reasons crabs have struggled so in recent years.
They have threatened to sue government regulators for not doing more to improve the Bay, such as better protecting underwater grass beds where crabs hide and feed, and reducing nutrients from sewage plants, farms and development that steal oxygen from water and create "dead zones" that sometimes kill crabs in summer months.
According to scientific surveys, the number of adult female crabs has dropped by 70 percent in the past 15 years, while harvests have been about half of their historical averages in both Virginia and Maryland in recent years.
Virginia's catch last year, of more than 19 million pounds, was one of the lowest on record since World War II.
"Given the severely compromised health of the crab population," Kaine wrote Friday, "our fishery experts are concerned that a single significant storm event, sufficient in magnitude to disrupt the recruitment of juvenile crabs into the Bay, could initiate a complete collapse of the Baywide blue crab fishery."
Late last month, all 40 state senators urged Kaine to seek federal disaster relief, as did U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-1st District, which includes many fishing towns and villages in coastal Virginia.
Virginia has faced commercial fishing crises before but has never sought federal aid in this fashion, said John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which regulates seafood harvests.
Those crises include the state's most notorious environmental accident, when the toxic pesticide Kepone was spilled into the James River in the 1970s. A 98-mile stretch of the James was closed to commercial and sport fishing until 1989.
The federal relief is prescribed under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Money has been allocated through the law because of damage to Gulf Coast fisheries after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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