Chesapeake Watermen Fear Blue Crab Not Coming Back - Going Gree...

Most Marylander's would be happy to give up crabs for a year or more to get Maryland crabs like we used to.

Let's face it we need to do more about the polution problems, maybe limit the days and hours for recreational boating, clean up our animal waste, and fertilize our lawns less.

I know the demand for Maryland crab is very high. But the crabbers need to stop pulling the females and the illegal tiny crabs just because they can get money for them.

Actually...the answers are in a host of choices - all of them tough ones.

Development: We all have seen waterfront development take off, as prices went up, up, up. The widespread use of lawn fertilizers, farm fertilizers, all of that stuff...it all goes into the watershed.

Overfishing: My family are crabbers. To continue to allow watermen to sell sponge crabs (females with their egg saks still attached, peelers (immature females who have not mated), and softshell crabs (just-molted females who have not mated) only depletes the species further.

So...all involved have tough choices to make. Municipalities and counties have to wiegh the costs of having expensive bayside and riverfront property to tax vs. the damage such things do to the watershed. Watermen, and the folks who demand blue crab delicacies, need to be more restrictive in what is allowed to be caught.

TKST and Andy, I agree with you; something definitely needs to be done, blue crabs are a big part of Maryland and its people and it would be a shame if they were to vanish forever.

This is a story i thought i would never see.... kinda scary actually...

I fished 50 pots in front of Colonial Beach on Sunday that had been out for 5 days and caught 17 crabs.