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Tensions over the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its wildlife have been simmering for a while, but now they're bubbling over. Some Virginia officials want to let watermen catch blue crab in the bay year-round, but critics worry that that would put too much strain on the fragile blue crab population. NPR's Julie Depenbrock has this report.
JULIE DEPENBROCK, BYLINE: Blue crabs are perhaps the most iconic species in the Chesapeake Bay. The crustacean - which is actually blue - is a favorite among seafood lovers, but pollution, habitat loss and overharvesting are all threats to its abundance.
BILLY RICE: Years ago, we used to catch what we could sell.
DEPENBROCK: That's Billy Rice. He's been crabbing in the Chesapeake since 1968.
RICE: Now we can sell everything we can catch.
DEPENBROCK: Five years ago, the blue crab population was estimated to be about 600 million. Now officials say it's closer to half that number. Today, Rice and his son Rocky are on a boat in the Potomac River, which flows into the Chesapeake. Rice shows me a crab pot - a large wire cage.
RICE: They're basically placed on the bottom with a buoy, or a float, that you can retrieve them by, baited with razor clams. And we work on a rig of about 300 pots.
DEPENBROCK: The Rices are out here three days a week, starting at dawn, but they can't get by on crabbing alone. A day's catch puts about $400 in their pocket, so on the days they're not crabbing...
RICE: I have a grain operation. I farm. Rocky has a catfish operation. He catfishes.
DEPENBROCK: A year-round crab season would affect people like the Rice's profoundly. Right now, the season runs from April to November in the Chesapeake.
ZACH WIDGEON: Historically, crabbing in Virginia took two forms - crab pots, which everyone in Virginia is pretty familiar with, and crab dredging during the winter.
DEPENBROCK: That's Zach Widgeon. He's the communications director for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. The commission vote next month could extend crabbing through the winter.
WIDGEON: An initiative like a year-round fishery, it's aiming to stabilize our crabbing industry. You know, they suffer pretty hard economically during periods of limited fishing activity.
DEPENBROCK: Virginia and Maryland used to allow crabbing year-round - until 2008, when a decline in population led to a prohibition on winter dredging. Chris Moore is a conservationist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He says reinstating winter crab dredging could put blue crabs at even greater risk.
CHRIS MOORE: Blue crabs migrate throughout the summertime, but during the winter, they actually become kind of semi-hibernative. And so what that means is they generally kind of stop moving, and they kind of burrow down into the sand or the mud bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
DEPENBROCK: Moore says overharvesting female blue crabs is the biggest concern.
MOORE: After they come out of their semi-hibernative state in the winter, they're the first ones to start spawning that year, and hopefully producing the next generation of blue crabs.
DEPENBROCK: Maryland officials say the species recovery can be traced to the 2008 prohibition on winter crab dredging and that the Virginia watermen's decision creates a rift in the long-standing partnership between the two states when it comes to the bay. Back on the crab boat, Billy Rice - who was born and raised on a Maryland tobacco farm - says he's against winter crab dredging because it could mean even fewer crabs in the bay.
RICE: I think it's just important to understand that, you know, we have a privilege to crab. It's not a right to crab.
DEPENBROCK: Rice says they have to have respect for the resource, so there will be crabs left for future generations.
RICE: Those are nice crabs.
DEPENBROCK: Julie Depenbrock, NPR News.
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