Bay Crabbers Fight Back

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

 

Earlier this summer we caught a glimpse of the unrest amongst Bay watermen who are in financial trouble thanks to potentially needless regulation and a troublesome market. Now they’re fighting back, according to the L.A. Times, via The Baltimore Sun, banding together to push back against harrying regulators and the cheap, imported crab meat that undercuts their already stupid expensive product.

Over the past half-year, dozens of watermen have formed the Blue Crab Design Team, which sounds more like a cute name for a design firm rather than a collection of surly crabbers. The team gets together to craft ways to tip regulations away from sustaining crab populations into their favor. While crab numbers have increased since the dramatic glut of a couple of years ago, preservation measures are still intact, which causes grief for watermen that are strapped for cash.

One such regulation that Team member Richard Young points out is one that forces crabbers to head home 7.5 hours after sunrise, which means that crabbers would be heading home at around 2 p.m. today, cutting their day significantly short.

It’s not all big government punishing the working man, though. The article also reveals that many crabbers have been smudging their numbers out of fear that if they caught too many crabs then the government would limit their catch. Lacking reliable numbers, the government limits catches anyway just to make sure that watermen don’t empty the Bay of crabs again.

No concrete word on how much the design team will be able to accomplish in the long run, but I’m going to go ahead and venture a prediction: watermen will continue to be unhappy and underpaid, regulations will still be questionable and we’re still going to have to pay too much money for a bushel of blue crabs.

It’s been an entire summer and I’m still upset about paying $120 for half a bushel of crabs. $120! Come on!

- Kris King

 

 

Tags: blue crabs, capitalism, Chesapeake Bay, environment, Gut Check, gut wrenching reality, I really like that picture, Kris King, nobody will ever be happy, Northern Virginia, regulations, sustainable foods, watermen