By Philip Rucker and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 27, 2007

The summer drought that has ruined gardens and withered crops throughout the mid-Atlantic region has turned this year's crabbing season topsy-turvy.

Across the Chesapeake Bay's midsection, watermen say the crab harvest is the worst they've seen in decades. But those in the Chesapeake's northernmost tributaries are hitting the jackpot, finding huge numbers of fresh blue crabs.

This year's unusually cold spring and severe lack of rain have conspired to pummel the already struggling crabbing industry, which for years has seen its harvests fall and its costs soar.

"It's hit the crabbers all over the bay," said John VanAlstine, 40, a crabber and director of the Working Watermen of Anne Arundel County. "We travel to where the crabs are, and right now, the crabs aren't in a lot of places."

Scientists and Virginia and Maryland officials said this year's crabbing season, which runs from spring until late fall, seems to be yielding below-average harvests and strange patterns.

"There's definitely a weird distribution of the crabs that we have this year as a result of the climate," said Bill Goldsborough, a senior scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The season got off to a slow start this spring because the cold weather kept many crabs from leaving their winter burrows on the bay bottom. Then came this summer's drought, which appears to have altered the bay's balance between freshwater and saltwater.

Less rain means less water coming out of the rivers that feed the bay and less dilution for the saltwater that washes in from the Atlantic Ocean. This shift, officials said, meant that some of the places where crabs are usually plentiful in midsummer -- like the shores off Anne Arundel and Southern Maryland -- suddenly became too salty for the crustaceans, which sought fresher waters far from the ocean.

"What it seems to be doing, really, is pushing the crabs north to the head of the bay and up into the tributaries," said Lynn Fegley, a fisheries biologist at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Experts and watermen said crabs are plentiful in the Elk and Sassafras rivers, the Delaware Canal and the Susquehanna Flats -- sites squeezed in the northernmost corner of the bay. The crabbers are following them.

"It's as jampacked with watermen up there as I've ever seen in my life," said Steve Lay, 55, of Havre de Grace. "I'm catching more crabs than I've ever caught my entire life."

There's a perplexing pattern in the Virginia portion of the bay, where crabs seem to be missing from the middle of the bay and are more prevalent farther south, where the Chesapeake meets the Atlantic. That would not seem to make sense, because the Atlantic is where saltwater comes from. But the rains upstream in the York and James rivers have dumped more freshwater into the bay, said Joe Grist of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

In Maryland waterfront communities including Galesville, Solomons Island and Bozman, south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, crabbers tell a different story.

VanAlstine, who goes crabbing near the West River in Anne Arundel, said that last summer he averaged eight to 11 bushels of top-grade blue crabs daily. On Thursday, after spending eight hours on the water, he had just 1 1/2 bushels.

"They're not feeding," he said. "They're not coming into the pots."

VanAlstine sells the top-grade crabs for $140 a bushel, but he struggles to break even -- especially with bait and fuel costs that average $300 daily.

"Right now, it's all about keeping our heads above water, knowing that when we get some freshwater back, we'll be fine," he said.

Restaurateurs, too, are feeling the pinch. The short supply of crabs has increased the prices some restaurants are paying. At Robertson's Crab House along Pope's Creek in Charles County, owner Billy Robertson said he is paying a 30 percent premium on crabs compared with last summer's prices.

"We're not able to inflate our prices to meet the cost that's being dealt to us," Robertson said. "If you inflate your prices, then people will probably go elsewhere."

This past week's scattered rainfall coupled with more rain in the fall could help lower the salinity in the bay and lift the unease hanging over the crabbing season.

"Right now, the harvest is down, but we anticipate a big harvest this fall," said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association.

But the rain might not come soon enough for some of area's watermen.

"The crabber won't be able to recoup what he's lost all summer, because he can't get the money for them," Simns said.

Added P.T. Hambleton, a waterman from Talbot County: "I think the damage is done."

In the end, though, the drought may be a boon for the long-term health of the bay's crab population, said Rom Lipcius, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. If female crabs release their eggs from farther north in the bay, the tiny crab larvae are not as likely to be flushed all the way out into the ocean, he said, which means more crabs could grow to maturity in the bay.

The drought could also be a good omen for another Chesapeake shellfish: the oyster. When water is saltier, Lipcius said, oyster larvae are also more likely to survive and "set" on hard surfaces on the bay bottom. That would be the start of a welcome trend for the bay's oyster, whose population is as little as 1 percent of its historic high because of chronic disease, pollution and previous overfishing.

For blue crabs, then, "I would say that the drought is likely to be a good thing," Lipcius said. "And for oysters as well."