Pilot program seeks more accurate count of Chesapeake Bay crabs

On the serene Potomac River, Rocky Rice’s crab-pot markers stretched for miles, an orange-dotted rope floating on water that sparkled like jewels under a bright summer sun.

There was a crab in every pot. “Probably six to eight,” Rice said.

Video

David Kirwan and his son Joey run a blue crab fishing boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Six days a week, they pull up red crab pots from the water, retrieve and sort the crabs, then re-bait the pots and sink them on a line to catch more crabs.

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Over two decades, watermen such as Rice have relied on a whimsical method of counting what they catch, relying on paper and pencil to log the size, sex and texture of trapped crabs, sometimes scratching out figures from memory before mailing them to the state. It has resulted in an inaccurate count at a time when Maryland is working to fully restore the Chesapeake Bay’s most iconic species.

But on his recent outing, Rice broke with tradition, putting away paper and pen. Instead he carried a digital ThinkPad with software that allowed him to count his catch in the middle of the river, then send it directly to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) using a wireless signal as his boat made its five-mile run to shore in Morgantown.

Rice is one of 50 Maryland watermen participating in a pilot program that could one day provide the most precise count of the Chesapeake Bay commercial blue-crab harvest the state has ever had.

Maryland’s watermen would be among the nation’s first to count their catch using smart technology — tablets and cellphones. As part of the pilot program, they can log their catch in three ways: software that sends it directly into a DNR database, text messages sent to a designated number and telephone calls to a call center.

It’s an attempt to solve a vexing problem with a few key strokes, said Steve Early, fisheries service division manager for DNR. Maintaining the bay’s crab stock is complicated, and knowing where adult crabs are harvested, especially females, is crucial to protecting them.

Females in the southernmost part of Maryland’s portion of the watershed are jealously guarded because they are crucial to maintaining the crab stock in Maryland and Virginia.

“With 5,200 watermen, the amount of paper coming from the current way of counting is a daunting challenge for the state. They’re a little bit behind the eight ball in knowing what’s coming out of the water,” said George Chmael, a facilitator for the Maryland Blue Crab Industry Design Team that recommended the technology.

“The state wants to make sure it doesn’t overshoot the catch,” Chmael said. “If you have to make a mistake, you want to make the mistake of leaving more crabs in the water.” Millions of crabs that watermen can catch are probably left in the bay because of cautious limits, Chmael said.

This year, the annual dredge survey in Virginia and Maryland showed that the juvenile crab population has rebounded significantly, from 207 million in 2011 to 587 million this year, after Virginia outlawed the winter harvest of most pregnant females. State officials and watermen want the number to keep going up.

State officials have required watermen to record their catch under the current system since 1994, Early said. Before that, they conducted random surveys asking watermen to share information about their catch.