Va. May Offer Jobs to Crabbers
The state is considering offering jobs to watermen who will be hardest hit by new fishing restrictions expected to be passed Tuesday to preserve the economically important blue crab.
Officials in the Department of Natural Resources and Virginia Marine Resources Commission have been quietly discussing the idea for the past several days as the scope of the restrictions becomes clear.
If a jobs program is created, it would be the first time Virginia has provided work for watermen to mitigate the effects of a fishery regulation. Any plan would likely be aimed at watermen on Tangier Island, who depend greatly on the blue crab harvest. State-sponsored work might include building and replenishing the bay’s depleted oyster reefs.
Legal and budgetary considerations could block a works plan, but "we have a responsibility to those hurt" by the regulations, said Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr.
"This is going down the road to compensating someone for the state’s action," Bryant said. "That has its plusses and its minuses. It’s really kind of a gray policy area."
Key measures expected to be passed would drastically curtail the amount of time that Tangier watermen and other crabbers can spend on the water.
VMRC’s staff is recommending closing the Dec. 1 to March 31 crab-dredging season entirely and ending the March 17 to Nov. 30 crab-potting season a month early.
VMRC meets Tuesday in Newport News to decide.
Regulators hope new restrictions will rebuild the crab population and allow for bigger catches in two or three years.
Crabs remain the single greatest resource available to bay watermen. The catch supported a $125 million crabbing industry in Virginia and Maryland last year.
Scientists from both states have determined that the bay’s crab population has been overfished seven out of the past 10 years. Estimates place the bay’s crab population this past winter at 120 million crabs, a 70 percent drop since the early 1990s.
Catches and the number of working watermen are also falling. Last year, about 1,500 people in Virginia held commercial licenses to harvest crabs and landed 19.3 million pounds, according to VMRC spokesman John Bull.
In 1990, before the crab population began to shrink, 3,045 harvesters were licensed and caught 52 million pounds.
Contact Lawrence Latane III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.
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