Crabs

[Ruination]

Your so full of it. You boys north of bridge bait your lines an traps. They never left. Seriously though. You can lay off all u want between pollution n becoming fish food they’ll b gone regardless. Just gonna happen lil faster with us killing em. An yea. Crabs are north of bridge. Call ur biologist guy gonna catch a load of supposedly non existent crabs. Like the duck migration things change in nature

Lol. You're defintely not biased even a little bit.

Your average com. Can't stop now because we will kill them anyways and it's definitely nothing we are doing. The short sightedness of commercial fishing has, and always will be, staggering.

Pollution: An excuse, crabs can live anywhere. Not only that, the Bay has been far worse in the past.

Pollution | Chesapeake Bay Program

When pollutants like excess nutrients, sediment and chemical contaminants enter local waterways, they threaten the health of plants and animals that live in the Bay ecosystem.

www.chesapeakebay.net

Fish: Ah the coms wet dream, it's not us, its the overpopulated rockfish Catfish. Never mind the fact that fish have been part of a balanced ecosystem for, well, only god knows how long.

And the Nihilism: They are all going to die anyways so we might as well kill them faster.

So you started your apprenticeship for carpentry yet?

 

[markd]

Are the spikes in N,P and sediment high mid-Atlantic hurricane years?

 

[870Wingmaster]

I can tell you that in the 60's things started going south on the Potomac when Blue Plains was releasing raw or poorly treated waste water and there began to be huge areas of thick green algae bloom on the river. The grass began to die out, fewer ducks frequented areas where they generally congregated, and the crabbing declined drastically. Soon to follow was the decline in the rockfish. They studied the crap out of everything before doing anything. Things are better than they have been but no where near what they were when I was a kid. Anyone who spends a lot of time on the water as I used to and has some common sense can see what has happened. I hope that with time and good stewardship things will improve. Just a rant from an old fart.

 

[Dirtybird420]

Lol. You're defintely not biased even a little bit.

Your average com. Can't stop now because we will kill them anyways and it's definitely nothing we are doing. The short sightedness of commercial fishing has, and always will be, staggering.

Pollution: An excuse, crabs can live anywhere. Not only that, the Bay has been far worse in the past.

Pollution | Chesapeake Bay Program

When pollutants like excess nutrients, sediment and chemical contaminants enter local waterways, they threaten the health of plants and animals that live in the Bay ecosystem.

www.chesapeakebay.net

Fish: Ah the coms wet dream, it's not us, its the overpopulated rockfish Catfish. Never mind the fact that fish have been part of a balanced ecosystem for, well, only god knows how long.

And the Nihilism: They are all going to die anyways so we might as well kill them faster.

So you started your apprenticeship for carpentry yet?

Man I feel like I hurt your feelings saying your full of it. I was just joking. But crabs deff can’t live everywhere I’ve seen hundreds of pots full of dead crabs from them being in pot when bad water comes in. Heck I’ve seen em climb up the rocks trying to get out. There’s also a direct correlation in rockfish numbers to crab numbers look up DNR research it’s on a graph. Regardless of what you or I think DNR said it’s not from overfishing an honestly if it was I might be a carpenter since the fishery woulda been over before I was born. There’s crabs out there I promise we can talk bout it in November. You can’t trust the science of the survey then not trust the science saying the resources aren’t overfished. An sadly there’s to much money on both sides of the what to do with the resource argument for anything you or I say to matter.

 

[Ruination]

That's true, they can't live in zero oxygen environments or in dyno blooms.

Feel free to post the graph, here's an actual study. https://www.vims.edu/GreyLit/VIMS/mrr93-6ocr.pdf

The DNR quota is not done properly. It's incredibly slow to react. That's because there is a ton of money involved. So when a survey comes out that says we have half the crab population of last year but still the same harvest quota, it's a real head scratcher. Then we can point to the numbers and say "See we were under out quota, we aren't over fishing" which is essentially what is happening here.

DNRs management of our bays resources is a joke and most scientists familiar will tell you so.

I don't blame you, you have a family to feed and you should fish as long as it's legal to do so and you can make a living. But the day of reckoning, more for rockfish than crabs, is coming in the not to distant future.

 

[Smackdown 870]

I will say this, I remember crabbing on the shore starting back in the early 80’s and the water was worse then compared to now IMO. I remember years there was dead toadfish just floating in the water of the Wye and algae blooms in the hot summer. Twice as many crabbers at most of the ramps compared to now. I can think of 100 things off hand that contribute to the decline but not sure its just 10. I think that maybe the blue cats may be in the mix now and that parts of the bay are changing compared to the past. Maybe remove the keeping of all females would help. Can’t say I also believe all the reports are cracked up to be as well.