Despite Rescue Effort, Bay Crabs at an Ebb

The crab's other problem is the harvest. Watermen using wire-mesh "pots," "trotlines" baited with bull lips, and metal dredges catch millions of crabs every year.

Maryland and Virginia, which share the bay, sought to limit the catch in 2001, with rules about what days watermen could work and the minimum size of crabs they could keep.

But, though the harvest went down, crabbers were still able to catch what scientists say is an unhealthy number of crabs in 2001, 2002 and 2004. And they're on pace to do it again this year, according to a recent estimate. The reason: Crab catches have declined, but the total number of crabs has dropped even faster.

Particularly troubling, some scientists say, is the number of female crabs that watermen catch. These crabs, which are usually picked of their meat and used in soups and crab cakes, are the key to the species' reproduction. But millions of them are caught, scientists say, before they are able to spawn.

"Unless you protect those females . . . well, you haven't done anything" to help the population rebound, said Yonathan M. Zohar of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in Baltimore. To supplement the population, his lab has experimented with raising baby crabs in a laboratory and releasing them into the wild.

Watermen, however, reject the idea that they are behind the crab's decline. In their view, the problem is the polluted water and they are only the most convenient scapegoats.

"Harvesting the crabs is not the problem," said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. "It's what we're putting in the bay that's the problem."

The decline in crab numbers seems to be rippling through the bay's ecosystem. Some clam species, usually the prime food for crabs, seem to be surviving in greater numbers. On the flip side, scientists fear that crab predators such as striped bass and croaker might soon suffer.

Many human diners are also noticing a difference.

At Jimmy Cantler's Riverside Inn in Annapolis, a cathedral of hard-shell crabs, a bushel of big jimmies cost $225 this summer. The price has risen about 20 percent in the past few years, one employee said. This year's drought had a hand in that, because it made the water saltier, which made the crabs move to new spots. But the declining numbers also seem to have played a role.

It's difficult to predict what the future holds for the Chesapeake's crabs. Some scientists think they'll stay relatively steady at their current low levels. Others worry that a disaster such as a hurricane or a shellfish disease could wallop the bay, catching the population at a weak moment, and push their numbers down much further.

There seems to be little danger that the crabs will go extinct in the bay. Nothing that produces 3 million eggs at a time will go easily.