The challenges of managing blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay – life cycle and fishery

OneNOAA Science Seminar Series

Title: The challenges of managing blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay – life cycle and fishery

Speaker: Glenn Davis, Natural Resources Biologist, Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Sponsor: NOAA's National Ocean Service Science Seminar Series; coordinator is Tracy.GIll@noaa.gov

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Abstract: The management of blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, in Chesapeake Bay took a dramatic change of course in Fall, 2008. It has been largely successful, but it took 15 years to implement. When a decline in the population of blue crabs was first observed in the mid-1990s, standard management actions –  size limits, effort reduction, etc. –  were put in place in a piecemeal fashion by each jurisdiction without much effect.

The hydrologic and biotic characteristics of the Chesapeake Bay, which make it the world’s most productive estuary for blue crabs, create a spatial and temporal partitioning of sizes and sexes. The life cycle of the blue crab, tailored to estuaries, and how the fishery and industry developed in response to the geographic differences in blue crab distribution, were challenges that needed to be overcome.

Bio(s): Glenn Davis is a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. He is also the current chair of the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee. He began working with blue crabs 32 years ago, at the inception of the Bay-wide blue crab winter dredge survey. He has been involved with numerous fishery-independent and fishery-dependent research and monitoring studies focusing on blue crabs.

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(Glenn Davis, Natural Resources Biologist, Maryland Department of Natural Resources)