The possibility of winter crab dredging in Virginia waters this year now looks to be off the shelf. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) voted 4-1 on Tuesday, Sept. 24, to advertise for a public hearing in October to receive public comment on whether to ban the dredge fishery for the 2024-25 crab season.
As part of the motion, commission members voted to advertise extending the crab pot season and continue to study the possibility of a dredge fishery.
The commission appears to be taking the advice of Virginia’s Crab Management Advisory Committee (CMAC). Those advisors voted 8-5 in August to recommend that VMRC not reopen the dredge fishery until a bay-wide stock assessment is complete in 2026.
VMRC closed the fishery in 2008 as part of a bay-wide effort to reduce the blue crab harvest by 34 percent. That ban on the crab dredge fishery amounted to half of Virginia’s required reduction in catch.
One of the main reasons CMAC is opposed to reinstating the crab dredge fishery is that the crab pot fishery would have to give up catch quotas to the dredge fishery as part of “conservation equivalencies,” referred to as CEs.
VMRC’s chief of Fishery Management, Patrick Geer, was instructed by the board to reach out to Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee to see if conservation equivalencies are required if the VMRC extends the crab pot season to run from March 1 to Dec. 31. The current season runs from March 17- Dec. 20. When VMRC extended crab pot seasons in the past there were no CE requirements, said Geer.
The VMRC staff also expressed concern that the commission voted in June to repeal a 16-year ban on winter dredging for blue crabs without establishing regulations on the fishery. Since there have been no gear or catch standards established, watermen have not been able to gear up for the fishery.
“If we leave it the way it is, the season will open in December with no rules or regulations,” said Geer.
At the end of the day, it was clear that the window of opportunity to re-establish a Virginia crab dredge fishery was waning. Most everyone who spoke at the hearing concluded that it was not feasible for watermen to gear up to start work in December and that it was not in the best interest of the majority of Virginia crabbers to open the fishery.
After the public hearing in October, the VMRC is expected to vote to ban crab dredging for another year. Since the fishery was first banned in 2008, VMRC has voted every year to keep the fishery closed.
