The Maryland blue crab fishery has finished the initial, USD 10,000 pre-assessment stage of Marine Stewardship Council certification and will soon decide whether to move forward with a full assessment at an estimated cost of USD 100,000.
The Maryland blue crab harvest has rebounded to historic levels of about 60 million pounds per year, after a decade of depletion, and is enjoying a buzz among Baltimore chefs for its flavor profile and provenance.
Management measures passed in 2008 by Maryland and Virginia to protect female crabs in late autumn in both states and ban Virginia’s dredge winter fishery have helped increase abundance of blue crabs, Thomas Miller, professor of fisheries science at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, told SeafoodSource.
Virginia’s harvest of about 30 million pounds has not fully recovered but is picking up, said Miller. Even though Maryland is the applicant, the MSC would be evaluating bay-wide management, since the two states essentially co-manage a shared fishery.
Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources used disaster relief money for the blue crab fishery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fund the blue crab pre-assessment, which was completed about a year ago.
The Chesapeake Bay blue crab industry has also struggled in recent years to compete with the high volume of less expensive Asian blue swimming crab meat imported into the U.S. market to meet blue crab demand.
The goal of seeking MSC certification, in part, is to increase the value of Maryland blue crab by marketing its sustainability credentials, said Steve Early, assistant director in the fisheries service for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources.
“We believe Chesapeake blue crabs are a special product,” he said. “We also believe we’ve got a pretty darned good management system, and if there’s an opportunity for us to take advantage of both those factors to enhance the viability and value of our blue crab industry, that’s where we’re going.”
Meanwhile, the state is pursuing full assessment for its striped bass fishery, with a 2011 quota of 1.96 million pounds.
“We’re waiting to see how that assessment process actually works out with striped bass before we decide whether to pursue the full assessment for blue crabs,” said Early.
A lack of environmental knowledge about the potential ecosystem impact of thousands of crab traps sitting on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay from spring to fall was the main question and potential issue that came out of the blue crab pre-assessment process, said Early. Between 5,000 and 6,000 people are eligible to go crabbing in Maryland.
The question of cumulative impact of crab pots on the Chesapeake ecosystem has not been studied, but there are no indicators of negative impacts, he said. “We consider that to be relatively minor and believe we could address that in a full assessment,” he explained.
Early expects a draft report evaluating striped bass against the three core MSC principles — sustainability of the target fish stock, minimizing environmental impact and the effectiveness of the management system — within the next month. Maryland will then have a chance to respond before the report is circulated for public review.
Another reason Maryland pursued MSC certification, says Early, was to receive an outside peer review of its fishery management and feedback on any issues it has not identified on its own, or management issues to address.
