Blue Crab Blues: Seafood Business Drowning

Water Pollution And Overfishing Have Driven Blue Crabs Out Of The Chesapeake

(AP)  Chesapeake Bay crabber Paul Kellam has advice for the teenage boys who help tend his traps every summer: You better have a backup plan.

It's an anxious summer for watermen harvesting the Chesapeake's best-loved seafood, the blue crab. The way some see it, the crabbing business here isn't just dying. It's already dead.

Crabs have thrived in the bottom muck of the Chesapeake and its tributaries even as centuries of overfishing harmed oysters, fish and other species in the nation's largest estuary. Now blue crabs are in trouble, too, and when they go, a way of life is sure to go with them.

"There was a time when crabbers were only out here from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now, it's about all we have left," says Kellam, 53, steering his 30-year-old rig "Christy" out of the Potomac River and onto the bay for a day of crabbing. The contradictory decor in the cabin sums up the outlook of today's waterman: a red wooden good-luck horseshoe dangles over a mud-splattered copy of "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook."

The bay's blue crab stock is down about 65 percent since 1990 due to overfishing and water pollution, according to Virginia and Maryland fisheries managers. The states have imposed steep cuts on this year's female crab harvest, aiming to reduce the number of crabs taken by more than a third.

For Kellam and his neighbors in southern Maryland, where the working rigs and crab picking houses that sustained these communities for generations have been replaced by yachts and vacation homes, hopes are dim that the blue crabs will ever come back.

"It's looking worse every year," says Bob McKay, who at 74 is the oldest working waterman in St. Mary's County. He still sells crabs out of a shed in his yard but doubts the industry will live much longer than he does. "I don't know what the solution could be."

Watermen have turned to real estate and automobile repair. They've opened seafood restaurants and bakeries.

The best way to make money on the Chesapeake these days is taking businessmen from Washington and Philadelphia on charter fishing trips. Those who still rely on crabbing are further hurt by a double punch of higher fuel costs and an economic downturn that's meant fewer consumers dropping up to $200 on a bushel of crabs.

"People don't have the disposable income. They're just not buying," says Kellam, who spends up to $150 a day on diesel, which costs about $5 a gallon at a nearby marina.

There was a time when Chesapeake watermen made their living off the winter oyster harvest, using hand tongs and later power dredges to supply most of the world's oysters. But disease and over-harvesting nearly wiped out Chesapeake oysters in the 1980s, and despite millions invested in restoration, they've never recovered. Scientists estimate the Chesapeake now contains about 1 percent of the oysters it once did.

After the oyster industry collapsed, watermen looked to hardy blue crabs to make up the slack. But the next generation may not have another option.

"I want to make a living on the water," says Randy Plummer, a chain-smoking 19-year-old who works on Kellam's crab rig. "But there ain't no future in it. Everybody knows that."

Plummer has wanted to crab since he was a boy, but is instead headed to community college this fall, at the urging of Kellam and his parents.

Even scientists who called for the harvest reductions say overfishing isn't entirely to blame.

The main culprit is water pollution and soil runoff from development throughout a watershed that is home to 10 million people. Excess nutrients wash into the Chesapeake, causing algae blooms and choking the native plant life that crabs rely on for food and habitat. In the summer, large swaths of the Chesapeake contain so little oxygen that scientists call them "dead zones," because few critters can live there.

Watermen call it "bad water," and they track it all summer, following crabs as they skitter to shallower water that contains more oxygen. Even when watermen luck out and pull up a pot full of crabs, long-timers say the crabs are nothing like they used to be.

"Sometimes in the summer, you pull the pots up, they've got algae and mud all over them. The bad water comes in and coats everything and the crabs can't stand it," Kellam explains.

He now spends hours hauling up the same number of crabs he could catch in a few pots a decade ago. And what he catches isn't as healthy-looking as the crabs he caught as a boy. Wholesalers are buying them anyway.

"They're buying a lot of stuff that 10 years ago they would've turned away," Kellam says.

Maryland and Virginia officials have responded to the watermen's plight by asking the federal government for a disaster declaration that would free up about $20 million to subsidize crabbers and seafood processors until blue crabs rebound.

Maryland is also working on sweeping revisions to state planning laws with an eye toward protecting its 3,000 or so miles of shoreline. Already this year, the state toughened zoning laws dealing with development closest to the water, a law that aims to reduce sediment and pollution running into the Chesapeake and its tributaries.

"It's certainly getting more difficult to make a living on the water," conceded Lynn Fegley, a biologist in charge of crabs for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But Fegley says the cynicism along the Chesapeake is unfounded. There will always be Chesapeake blue crabs, she says - as long as watermen lay off them when the stock dips.

"As the watershed gets more crowded, the face of the fishery may change. But people are always going to want seafood, right? It's healthy and it's delicious. What we have to do is find a way to harvest seafood that's sustainable for the future," Fegley says.

But Thomas Courtney, who sells Kellam the alewife fish he uses for bait, laughs when asked whether state efforts to revive blue crabs will bring them back.

"It ain't what we're pulling out of the water. It's what we're putting in the water," says Courtney, 62. "You've got a cornfield, 20 acres, you put 80 or 90 houses on it, hook 'em up to sewer pipes, put roads and ditches down. That's what's destroyed the bay. It ain't us. They let development take over and then, that's it, we're done."

[rf35]

"Let them eat (crab) cake!"

[rf35]

Overfishing or pollution, the cause is the same...too many humans. When you boil most problems in the world down the the most basic root cause, it is always the same. Too many humans. Air pollution, water pollution, high fuel costs, high food costs, endangerment of various species. Too many humans.

[texanforlogi]

Of course, this is news--the man-made collapse of one of America''s greatest food harvests is definitely news!

Also, it''s one of the saddest things I''ve heard lately--I do love those crab cakes!

[hologram5]

and this is news?

[ubrew12]

Meanwhile, the West Coast oyster fishery (from CA to British Columbia) is shutting down.

Meanwhile, Alaskan salmon fisheries have been hit hard by something that turns salmon flesh black.

In both cases, its a bug that doesn''t belong in northern waters, but has MOVED north thanks to Global Warming.

[lovesamerica]

I hope that tuna story isn''t right, otherwise there will be a greater number of fish poachers looking for a quick buck.

[rushlimpdrug]

mmmmmmm donuts.

can''t overfish donuts.

I catch them by the dozen

and there''s always plenty.

Hey, anyone going out for pizza?

[freckster]

I''ve seen the decline of the blue crab here on Florida''s west coast in my 35 years here. It hasn''t been overfishing here (and I doubt it is overfishing in MD) - it is pollution due to run-off.

Florida needs to quit caving to snow birds & transplants that think a lush green lawn is required in Florida. It is not. It is difficult to maintain and requires too much water and fertilizer. Water conservative landscaping with native plants should be the law. Save water, save runoff, save the beaches and sea creatures.

The solution is quite simple, really.

Time was when SUV''s were fashionable - high maintenance landscaping needs to go the way of the SUV.

[lovesamerica]

It is a sorry state of affairs when thoughtlessness and poor planning lead to a species demise.I think it is time to stop the ''all you can eat'' shrimp dinners,lobster bakes ect. They are all, almost gone folks. Building along shores,along waterways in watersheds does nothing but pollute the water it is headed to...its called sheeting in your nest. Poor crabs

[questionnews]

Anyone else watches Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel? The regulation imposed on those crab fishermen are pretty strict, but they have been needed to ensure a healthy population of king & opie crab. Why don''t they have similar regulations in the Chesapeake Bay?

[pensacola88]

Blue Crabs are very hearty creatures, but aren''t immunse from feeding problems. The Chesapeake Bay problem is similar to other probelms experienced in Texas with increased salinity in the estuaries because rivers feeding fresh water are being trapped in dams for surface drinking water supplies.

When fresh water is trapped and kept from flowing into bays, the water in the bay gets too salty to support oyster and shrimp reproduction. Then, blue crabs face food source reductions, and dwindle severly. The loss of oyster and shrimp in the bays can only be offset with permitting fresh water to flow into the bay to decrease salinity and flush toxins out of the estuaries.

[displeased]

It''s all about greed. We''ll suck every living resource out and fill our pockets and bellies until it''s gone and move on to something else. Not just living resources, but ALL resources. That''s what parasites do, right?

[gwhaia]

Sorry but I have no sympathy. The crabbers overfished it. They are the ones who should have been watching what they were doing to preserve the future of the industry and the species. The only thing they were doing was watching the money go into the bank after every huge haul.

As far as the Japanese go theirs is another example of actions dictated by culture and religion having a detrimental impact on the someone or something. We kill and rape the land and the animals of the earth in the name of the Lord. We are all short-sighted idiots who have damned the next generation to an abysmal life.

[kennedy7955]

Overfishing will be corrected by law or by supply and demand. The supply and demand approach might come too late and wipe out whole species. It is time for the government to support fish farming in a big way.

[xmanborg]

Over Fishing and Crabing and on NPR radio yester the Blue Fin Tuna are almost gone. The Japanese have all but wiped out the Blue Fin Tuna in the Pacific and are now Fising the Atlantic and Indian Ocean clean.

They said on NPR yesterday that there needs to be put a stop to fishing of Blue Fin Tuna for 5 years and let the species rebound. One Large Blue Fin Tuna can net you almost 50,000 dollars.