Virginia’s winter crab dredge fishery is banned for the 2024-25 year.
After a public hearing on Monday, Oct. 28, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) voted, 6-1, to close the winter dredge season for blue crabs for the 2024/2025 season.
Virginia’s winter crab dredge fishery, that harvests between 80% to 90% female crabs that spawn in the spring, is one of the most controversial fisheries on the bay.
Dredging for crabs in winter consists of dragging heavy metal traps behind workboats to scoop semi-dormant crabs from their winter slumber on the Bay bottom. Unlike in the active crabbing season, winter crabs are lethargic and don’t scramble to get away.
The decades-old controversy over winter dredging for crabs was renewed this year. It all started when Virginia Watermen’s Association president and Virginia Crab Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) member James “J. C.” Hudgins recommended the committee request VMRC to come up with guidelines for an experimental crab dredge fishery with a limit of “eight to ten boats.”
The CMAC board advanced the idea, voting 10-4 in June to send the matter to VMRC for consideration.
Hudgins says he introduced the reopening proposal to provide more winter jobs for watermen who are pretty much confined to working in the state oyster fishery and to provide crabs for the states crab picking houses in the winter. Of late, Virginia crab picking houses have either shut down in the winter or brought in crabs from the Gulf of Mexico or other warm weather states to keep their doors open.
On the CMAC proposal, VMRC voted 5-4 later in June to repeal a 16-year ban on winter dredging for blue crabs and to reopen the fishery with a 1.5 million-pound harvest cap.
The approval sparked strong opposition from the State of Maryland and environment groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Winter dredging for blue crabs was banned in 2008, and ever since, commercial fishing lobbyists have been working to bring the dredge fishery back. The 2008 ban was sparked at the time by a disturbing Bay-wide crab survey result that in 2007 showed there were 251 million crabs in the bay, down from an 852 million high in 1992.
VMRC closed the fishery in 2008 as part of a baywide effort to reduce the blue crab harvest by 34%. That ban on the crab dredge fishery amounted to half of Virginia’s required reduction in catch.
In the years since, the crab population has been gradually growing. Last winter’s Baywide estimated blue crab abundance was 317 million crabs. Adult female have crabs surpassed the average level for the last two years in a row.
CMAC came back in August 2024 with a 8-5 vote not to reopen the fishery but recommended that VMRC reconsider it after the 2026 bay-wide stock assessment is complete in 2026.
At the meeting Monday, VMRC commissioners were reminded of the controversial elements surrounding the fishery. A commissioner suggested VMRC not revisit the opening of the fishery again until after 2026. But a court order dictates that VMRC must consider the reopening of the fishery every year. After the 2008 ban, the annual VMRC “revisit of the fishery” policy was won in court by proponents of the fishery.
VMRC staff has been directed to “remain focused on creating a regulatory framework for winter dredging, should conditions in the blue crab fishery permit its reintroduction in the future,” leaving the door open for more discussion in the future.
