The dramatic decline of 50% in the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay since 2010 has researchers puzzled. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with associate editor and senior writer Tim Wheeler about what they found. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: There's been a 50% decline in the blue crab population since 2010. This is Don Rush. That's the finding of a comprehensive stock assessment begun in 2023. This is the result of work by research institutions and fishery managers from Maryland, Virginia, and the Potomac River. The basic problem they say is not enough young crabs are surviving. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal, we talked with associate editor and senior writer Tim Wheeler about the significance of the new report.
WHEELER: Well, Don, this was a finding of a study. It was, I guess two years in the process, three years in vision. A few years back when we saw a real series of under average results from the annual winter dredge survey that Maryland and Virginia do of the crab population. The scientists thought high time, we do sort of a real close analysis of the bay's crab population. One that hadn't been done since about 2011. And what they found was that the population currently is about 50% below what it was back around 2010. And then they tried to sort of understand what might have brought it there. And for the most part, other than ruling out a couple of things, they didn't really find that any one cause one smoking gun for this decline. The conclusion was it's likely a number of causes, but they couldn't really put their fingers on it.
RUSH: So I understand, and one of the focuses has been on the juvenile survival as opposed to say the female crime reproduction.
WHEELER: They were seeing the female population go up and down, but it didn't ever sort of really slip into the danger zone. The males had been down. They're the ones that received the bulk of the harvest attention. But the one that was a real warning sign was the juvenile crabs because they picked them up too, and they saw them reaching levels that hadn't been seen since the survey began in 1990, the lowest and the second lowest. That was troubling.
RUSH: I also understand that in terms of the crab larvae, that there's been a drop in them returning to the bay, that there might be something going on out there.
WHEELER: It's a big question mark. We don't fully understand what happens. Female crabs migrate down the bay after they've mated... and they carry their eggs to the mouth of the bay. They release their fertilized eggs there, the larvae drift out into the Atlantic ocean and slosh around out there in the coastal waters for a few to several weeks and then somehow make their way back into the bay. But that's a lot of territory and a lot of things can be happening out there. The tides, the winds, the currents, that's an area fill of intense scrutiny. It was not actually touched on in this study because they didn't have any new field observations. There is a separate study underway right now led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
RUSH: So in terms of the crabbers themselves, has there been any sense about the reaction to this report from the watermen? I know some have suggested that they're fearful that this could mean tighter regulations.
WHEELER: That's always a fear, but they were worried, yeah, that this was going to lead to that. And it's that anecdotal sense that, look, I'm catching plenty for me, but that's sort of, now, that's not what it was like 15 or 20 years ago. So it's one of the sort of challenges was the sort of thing, understanding the current situation versus what it used to be... the long term. And there were those who said on the other extreme, we should stop catching crabs for a while. Well, that would be disastrous for our economy, and that would be an issue.
RUSH: Bay Journal associate editor and senior writer Tim Wheeler, on the major decline in the blue crab population since 2010. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
