Quote:
Originally Posted by ffemtreed
I agree with most of your post, but I don't think overfishing is the cause of the bluecrab problem. We are catching record lows and the population is still declining. That stat alone rules out overfishing as a major cause. My guess at the culprit is habitat and pollution. I bet if we can restore the bay grass and oyster population you will see a tremendous rebound in the crabs for two reasons, the obvious is crabs will have somewhere to hide and mature. The second reason is if those two things rebound then that means the bay is healthy and thriving, thus crabs will do better.
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catching record lows does not rule out overfishing, it is a direct result of overfishing. I am not saying that it is the only reason, but it is a factor for the decline. I agree that pollution plays a part but the population steadily declined before the water got so polluted. another factor is the recovery of the rockfish. they love crabs and when their stocks were coming up a few years ago after they were almost gone it was almost as if there was a new predator in the system. we had a rising rockfish population and a declining menhaden population so more crabs were getting eaten to make up for the menhaden loss. I caught plenty of rockfish years ago that had bunches of little baby crabs in their stomachs and plenty that had absolutely nothing in their stomach and were skinny as eels. at that point there was just not enough food for all of them. all of those are factors and I believe that you will not fix the problem by only addressing 1 or 2 of them. you need to address all of them. the chesapeake bay is not at all like it used to be. I remember when you could see 20 feet down and count the crabs on the bottom when I was catching big blues on my snoopy pole. now you can barely see 6 inches down.