Crab Season Fades, Oyster Harvesting in Full Swing

Water temperatures are cooling, oysters are fattening, and blue crabs are burrowing.

Maryland’s watermen, meanwhile, have removed canopies from their boats that protected them from the summer’s rays. They’ve replaced them, variously, with the full array of oyster harvesting equipment, including hand tongs, patent tongs, diving tanks, power dredges, and sail-powered dredging gear. The state opened its public wild harvest areas to tongers and divers on Oct. 1 and to dredgers on Nov. 1.

That means more fried oysters, oysters on the half shell, oyster stews, oyster fritters, oyster pot pies, and scalloped oysters are now appearing on the menus of regional restaurants to the delight of fresh seafood lovers. And lest we forget, oyster stuffing with sage that graces so many Thanksgiving tables.

Shown on opening day, Oct. 1, with their limit-catch of hand-tonged oysters from Broad Creek waters, just north of Choptank River, are (l-r) Johnny Gay, Jason Gay and Annie Barre

Gregg Bortz provided the following statistics regarding Maryland crab and oyster harvests in recent years.

Maryland landed about 24.23 million pounds of blue crab in 2023 with a dockside value of about $52.95 million.

In 2024, Maryland landed about 25.18 million pounds of blue crab with a dockside value of $48.67 million.”

With no scientific or expert explanation, I would speculate that the reduction in dockside value in 2024, despite a higher harvest from the previous year, resulted from the higher prices of groceries due to inflation, which reduced overall demand for crabmeat, still considered somewhat of a luxury item.

Bortz said commercial wild-caught oyster harvests for 2023-24 were 437,536 bushels with a dockside value of $15.64 million. For 2024-25, the wild-caught harvest numbered 319,986 bushels with a dockside value of $11.83 million, a significant reduction from the previous year.

That 319,986 number is the smallest recorded harvest of wild caught oysters by Maryland’s watermen since the 2019-2020 season when the harvest dipped to 274,325 bushels. Other recent harvests include 346,698 bushels in the 2020-2021 season; 548,558 bushels for 2021-2022; 722,850 bushels for the 2022-2023 season; and the 437,536 bushels mentioned above for the 2023-2024 season..

One possible reason for the decline in the 2024-2025 harvest could be the fact that Maryland’s watermen only purchased 1,122 oyster licenses for that year compared to 1,293 for the previous year. Weather variables aside, fewer watermen harvesting typically means fewer oysters harvested

And finally, here are the numbers of licensed Maryland watermen (any species) for the past decade, which have been fairly consistent:

2023 – 6,256; 2022 –  6,228; 2021 – 6,270; 2020 – 6,255; 2019  – 6,209; 2018 – 6,224; 2017 – 6,222; 2016 – 6,250; 2015 – 6,206; 2014 – 6,073; 2013 – 5,860.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist, and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.