A team of economists from the University of Maryland, working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, has devised an intriguing program to use $3.5 million in federal funds to buy back and retire seldom-used commercial crabbing licenses that have been issued to watermen working the Chesapeake Bay. The state has tried this before, with at best modest success, but this time they may have a better idea.
The objective of the buyback is to reduce pressure on the crab population and to enable DNR officials to get an accurate count of the number of active commercial crabbers working the bay. Although the targets for the buyback program are people who don't use their licenses very often, an unknown number of them will make use of them in any given year, and DNR wants to remove that unpredictability from their calculations on how to manage the crab harvest. Better numbers would result in better policy, or so the theory goes.
When the state tried a buyback two years ago, it asked watermen to name their own price. It didn't work so well; one waterman offered to sell his for $425 million. The state tried again by offering $2,260 for the holders of "limited crab catcher" licenses and did modestly better. This time, the state is going after a higher class of licensees, and it's trying a more sophisticated theory of "crabonomics."
Read the complete opinion piece from The Baltimore Sun.