VMRC advertises to ban Virginia winter crab dredging

Winter crab dredging in Virginia waters this year looks to be off the shelf as Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) voted 4-1 on Tuesday, Sept. 24 to advertise for a public hearing in October to receive public comment to ban the dredge fishery for the 2024-2025 crab season.

As part of the motion too, VMRC voted to advertise extending the crab pot season and to continue to study the possibility of a dredge fishery in the future. VMRC appears to be taking the advice of the Virginia Crab Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) that voted 8-5 in August to recommend that VMRC not reopen the dredge fishery until a bay-wide stock assessment is complete in 2026.

VMRC closed the fishery in 2008 as part of a bay-wide 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. 

One of the main reasons CMAC is opposed to reinstating the crab dredge fishery is that the crab pot fishery would have to give up catch quotas to the dredge fishery as part of “conservation equivalencies” (CE).

VMRC’s Chief of Fishery Management Patrick Geer was instructed by the board to reach out to Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee to see if CEs are required if VMRC extends the crab pot season to run from March 1 to Dec. 31. The current season runs from March 17- Dec. 20. When VMRC extended crab pot seasons in the past there were no CE requirements, said Geer.