Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Claws are out over proposed changes to NC blue crab fishery

December 1, 2025 — North Carolina’s blue crabs could soon be the latest species in the state to face harvest cutbacks and other limiting restrictions over concerns about the declining health of the state’s most valuable commercial fishery.

But crabbers are going to make sure the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission noisily hears their concerns before any additional steps to limit seasons and daily catch hauls are implemented.

Still, officials with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries have said sampling programs and landing data continue to show worrisome declining trends. Agency biologist Robert Corbett Jr., who also is the department’s co-lead on blue crabs, told the commission at its Aug. 20 meeting that neighboring states are showing similar negative long-term directions with their blue crab fisheries.

Read the full article at Star News Online

NORTH CAROLINA: NC fishermen challenge proposed blue crab cuts

November 19, 2025 — North Carolina’s commercial fishing advocates are raising alarms over proposed blue crab harvest restriction, just as the Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) removed the expected vote from this week’s meeting agenda.

According to an updated agenda posted on Nov. 19, the action item to consider new management strategies under the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3 has been taken off the table. The shift comes days after the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition submitted a resolution opposing additional restrictions on the state’s most valuable commercial fishery.

During its Nov. 5 meeting in Morehead City, the coalition- which was formed earlier this year by coastal county lawmakers- voted to oppose any new harvest measures until the next blue crab stock assessment is completed in 2026. Members argued that without a reliable assessment, major changes would be premature.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population falls to ‘distressing low’

June 10, 2025 — Blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay have dropped to a “distressing low” number, experts say, marking several years of repeated declines and raising concern about their long-term health.

The estimated number of crabs was 238 million, the second-lowest point since an annual blue crab dredge survey to measure their population started in the 1990s and coming shortly after 2022’s record low of 226 million crabs, according to experts. The survey found that the decline hit all of the crustaceans, regardless of maturity or gender.

“It’s disturbing because we’ve seen in all sectors — adult males, adult females and juvenile crabs — drops in their numbers,” said Allison Colden, Maryland executive director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The biggest concern, she and other experts said, is the drop in juvenile crabs.

“There’s a disconnect,” she said, “in the productivity of the blue crab population and the number of females in the water.”

The causes of their decline are a bit of a mystery to scientists. The blue crab population can vary widely each year, depending on several factors, including changes to their habitat — especially a loss of underwater grasses that are critical for young crabs, an increase in predators such as blue catfish and red drum fish, pollution runoff into the bay and dramatic shifts in wind, current and storm patterns that can especially affect juvenile crabs.

“If it gets too cold too quickly that causes them to die, and we’ve seen a very high rate of crabs dying over the winter,” Colden said.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Chesapeake Bay blue crab population dip worries experts

June 2, 2025 — The most updated edition of the annual Chesapeake Bay blue crab winter dredge survey has found that the blue crab population in the U.S. states of Maryland and Virginia is the second-smallest recorded in recent history. 

The survey, conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, estimated the total crab population to be 238 million, just above 2022’s all-time low of 226 million.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Blue Crab Numbers Down From Last Year, Multi-Year Analysis To Begin

May 28, 2024 — The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population is holding steady but remains below average, new data show, easing but not completely dispelling worries about the long-term viability of the region’s most important commercial and popular recreational fishery.

The recent winter dredge survey, conducted each year by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, found about 317 million crabs in the Bay and its tributaries, the two agencies announced. That is down slightly from last year’s estimate of 323 million crabs, though well above the all-time low of 227 million crabs in 2022.

The tally of spawning-age female crabs—a critical indicator of the overall crab stock’s health—decreased by 12.5 percent. But that number is still well above the threshold that biologists say is the minimum needed to sustain the population.

The abundance of juvenile crabs continued to recover from an all-time low in 2021 but remained well below average for the fifth year in a row. The survey found 138 million young crustaceans this year, a nearly 20% increase over the 2023 survey.

Read the full article at the Bay Journal

Blue crabs are showing up more often in the warming Gulf of Maine

October 17, 2023 — Laura Crane winds her way around a maze of shallow pools at the Webhannet Marsh near Wells. She stops at one pool with a small blue flag poking through the tall grass at the water’s edge, grabs the rope lying nearby, and pulls.

“OK, first trap we already have two blue crabs, said Crane, as she hauls up a small, wire mesh trap from the muck.

And with metal kitchen tongs in hand, Crane attempts to pry away one of the crabs that’s clutching one side. It’s small, with a greenish gray shell and bright blue claws. She measures its size and determines that it’s a male.

Crabs that have been caught before have a small notch clipped from their swimmer paddle. And after a lengthy battle with the kitchen tongs, Crane confirms that this crab has not been tagged.

Read the full article at Maine Public

MAINE: Have you seen a blue crab in Maine? Researchers want to know where

August 17, 2023 — The reports have come from up and down the coast of Maine: Blue crabs have been spotted around dock pilings, pulled up in lobster traps and found washed up on beaches.

The crabs, usually associated with coastal Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, have been showing up more often and in larger numbers in the Gulf of Maine over the past few years. To better understand the shifting population, scientists are now asking fishermen and members of the public to report their sightings through an online survey.

Jessie Batchelder, a fisheries project manager with Manomet, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit focused on conservation and science education that has been studying blue crabs in Maine, said the information submitted by lobstermen, clam harvesters and others who are frequently on the water is key to getting a better picture of the blue crab population.

“They have a vast knowledge of what’s going on and what they’re seeing,” she said.

In the past, researchers would occasionally hear about stray blue crabs being found in lobster traps or by clam harvesters, but the reports started to become more frequent in 2021. That got researchers thinking about studying how blue crabs are moving into the Gulf of Maine as waters warm because of climate change, Batchelder said.

Last year was the second warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine, with an average surface water temperature of 53.66 degrees Fahrenheit. While that temperature fell just short of the 2021 record, it continued the Gulf’s historic trend as one of the fastest-warming ocean areas on the planet.

The Gulf of Maine, 36,000 sprawling square miles stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is home to rare whales and seabirds, valuable fish such as cod and haddock, and the $1.5 billion U.S. lobster industry, all of which are affected by warming waters.

Read the full article at Spectrum News

MAINE: Scientists call on fishermen to report blue crab sightings, which are becoming more common in Maine

August 12, 2023 — Stray blue crabs have been known to show up in a Maine lobster trap here and there. But scientists say the species, which is common in the mid-Atlantic, is showing up more frequently in the Gulf of Maine as waters warm.

Manomet and the Maine Department of Marine Fisheries are calling on fishermen to track and report their sightings and observations through an online survey.

Fishermen and members of the public have reported 24 blue crab sightings so far this year, and that’s on top of the blue crabs that are routinely found in researchers’ traps placed around the Casco and Damariscotta estuaries.

Juvenile blue crabs and females carrying eggs are among those spotted in Maine, said Jessie Batchelder, a project manager for Manomet’s fisheries team. They’ve also been seen during the winter.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Fishermen face shutdowns as warming hurts species

October 28, 2022 — Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back.

Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfishing industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of overfishing that already taxed the population.

Officials in Alaska have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest and winter snow crab harvest, dealing a blow to the Bering Sea crab industry that is sometimes worth more than $200 million a year, as populations have declined in the face of warming waters. The Atlantic cod fishery, once the lifeblood industry of New England, is now essentially shuttered. But even with depleted populations imperiled by climate change, it’s rare for regulators to completely shut down a fishery, as they’re considering doing for New England shrimp.

The Northern shrimp, once a seafood delicacy, has been subject to a fishing moratorium since 2014. Scientists believe warming waters are wiping out their populations and they won’t be coming back. So the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering making that moratorium permanent, essentially ending the centuries-old harvest of the shrimp.

It’s a stark siren for several species caught by U.S. fishermen that regulators say are on the brink. Others include softshell clams, winter flounder, Alaskan snow crabs and Chinook salmon.

Read the full article at ABC News

US anti-IUU bill would expand SIMP to cover all imported seafood

August 9, 2021 — A recent committee meeting started the discussions on a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and slave labor in the seafood supply chain.

The bill, H.R. 3075, was covered during a recent meeting of the Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee. It would enact the expansion of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) to cover all seafood and seafood products – the program, initiated in 2016, originally included tuna, king crab, blue crab, red snapper, Pacific and Atlantic cod, dolphinfish, grouper, sea cucumber, swordfish, and sharks in its coverage requirements, with shrimp added in 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source