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June 12, 2025

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Ecosystem Eco Lead

Oyster Rebound Prompts Md. to Ease Some Harvest Limits

July 7, 2021 by Bay Journal

Amid indications that Maryland’s oyster population is on the rebound, state fisheries managers are easing some harvest limits they had imposed two years ago.

The Department of Natural Resources announced July 1 that it would permit commercial oystering Monday through Friday, ending the Wednesday harvesting ban.

The DNR also has proposed reopening most areas north of the Bay Bridge to harvesting in the upcoming season, which runs Oct. 1 through March 31, 2022. Only the Chester River would remain off-limits under the proposal, which is expected to be finalized in July.

Watermen welcomed the decision, though they had pressed for even more easing of the limits. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, though, called the announcement “a missed opportunity” that could undercut the recovery of the Bay’s oyster population.

Oysters are a keystone species in the Bay. They filter the water and provide habitat for other fish and aquatic creatures with the reefs they build of their shells. But overharvesting, habitat loss and disease have devastated the population, reducing it to an estimated 1–2% of historic levels.

They are also a pillar — though much diminished — of the Bay’s seafood industry and traditional fishing culture. The tension between their ecological and economic importance has led to conflict, especially in Maryland, where watermen and environmentalists have feuded over regulating harvests, creating harvest-free sanctuaries and spending large sums of state and federal funds to restore reef habitat.

In Maryland, watermen had pressed for lifting harvest restrictions in the wake of the DNR’s updated assessment of the state’s oyster population, released in June. It found that the number of legally harvestable oysters this year had increased to around 500 million, the third largest number in the last two decades.

The rebound was most pronounced in the Choptank River and Tangier Sound, where abundance hit 20-year highs. In other areas, the number of harvestable oysters remained the lowest in two decades.

But the update also found that a record number of juvenile oysters, or spat, had been produced last year.

Chris Judy, the DNR’s shellfish program manager, said the stock assessment showed the oyster population was “trending in the right direction.”

“Granted, spat need to grow,” he said, “but this, along with market abundance, is a notable positive result.” Spat generally take about three years to reach legally harvestable size.

The update marks a turnaround from the results of the DNR’s 2018 stock assessment, which estimated that the state’s population of market-size oysters had declined by half since 1999. The assessment also determined that oysters were being overharvested in more than half of the areas open to commercial harvest.

In response to the 2018 assessment, the DNR clamped down, banning oystering on Wednesdays and reducing the maximum catch on other days. The agency also closed most areas north of the Bay Bridge to preserve the remaining low numbers of market-size oysters there.

Oyster populations in Virginia’s portion of the Bay also are trending up in most places, according to Andrew Button, head of conservation and replenishment for the state’s Marine Resources Commission. Surveys there show oysters of all sizes at or near 20-year-plus highs, he said.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is expected to announce its rules for the 2021–22 oyster season in August.

The harvest rules the Maryland DNR announced July 1 are unchanged from what it had proposed in early June.

Over the last two seasons, watermen had chafed over the Wednesday harvest ban. Being limited to four days had prompted some to go out in foul weather, they said, risking their boats and personal safety.

Most watermen say the DNR should also increase daily harvest limits, arguing that there’s no reason to keep the brakes on under such improved conditions.

State fisheries managers left those limits unchanged. Watermen who dive for oysters or pluck them from the bottom with hand tongs or patent tongs would be allowed to bring back 12 bushels per person per day, compared with 15 bushels before. Those who use power dredges would be limited to 10 bushels per person or 20 per boat with a helper, down 20% from what they had been.

Despite the restrictions, watermen landed 330,000 bushels of oysters in the most recent season, a 20% increase over the previous season and more than twice the number landed in 2018‑19, before harvest limits were imposed.

Watermen contend that the growth in the oyster population, even as landings increased, shows that the limits are no longer needed.

“We’re seeing an increase over time,” Jeff Harrison, president of the Talbot Watermen Association, said at a June 8 meeting of the DNR’s Oyster Advisory Commission. “We have a great spat set, so we know in the future we’re going to have oysters.”

But the Bay Foundation, which had opposed easing harvest restrictions, warned that the DNR decision could backfire.

“The stock assessment continues to show overharvesting happening in several areas of the Bay, which these regulations fail to address,” the foundation said in a statement. “In fact, this action opens the door for more harvest, which puts any chance of this year’s record spat set contributing to the long-term recovery of oysters at significant risk.”

While the assessment found fewer areas of the Bay being overfished, it found continued overharvesting in the Choptank and in Tangier Sound, the two areas with the most plentiful oysters.

The Bay Foundation urged the DNR to rethink the way it manages the oyster fishery, arguing that the increased harvest of the past two years shows that the methods for limiting harvest pressure aren’t working.

The foundation said that fishery managers should require watermen to report their harvest online, as Virginia will begin doing this fall. It also said the DNR should switch to setting a total allowable catch for each area. That way, managers could monitor the harvest more closely and close it promptly in areas where the cap has been reached.

The DNR’s Judy said the state plans to begin a trial of online harvest reporting this fall.

Allison Colden, the foundation’s Maryland fisheries scientist, said the DNR needs to look for better ways to regulate the size of the fishery, which has grown dramatically. The number of watermen who paid the required fee to harvest oysters commercially increased from 822 in 2018 to 1,239 last fall, the most in two decades.

It’s a “sensitive issue” and one that needs to be discussed, Colden said, because oystering is an integral part of the traditional fishing culture in the Bay’s rural communities.

“But it’s obviously something that I don’t think the current regulations have a handle on,” she said. “I think we at least need to have leadership from the department in having that conversation.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Eco Lead Tagged With: bay foundation, DNR, harvest, limits, Maryland, oysters, watermen

Md. Crabbing Industry Fears Long-Term Effects of 2020 Visa Shortages

May 5, 2020 by Maryland Matters

Maryland’s famous crab industry is facing an uphill battle. With another year of visa caps, there’s a severe shortage of migrant workers to work as crab pickers ― and few Americans willing to do the job. This year, Maryland crabbers fear for the life of an industry that has been in their families for generations.

Only nine crab processors ― which represent 95% of the state’s crab meat production ― remain in Maryland. The processors ― or picking houses ― rely on about 500 foreign seasonal workers to pick crabmeat each year. To work in the United States those workers need H-2B visas designated for temporary non-agricultural workers.

Maryland has received about 160 visas ― 340 short of what the industry says it needs.

A History of Visa Shortages

Crab processors have struggled with visa shortages for years, mostly because of competition from other seasonal businesses, including landscaping and construction.

In 2018, demand for visas was so large that the Department of Homeland Security began awarding the visas through a lottery system.

“It was just awful,” Jack Brooks, president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said about the 2018 visa shortage. “Watermen did not have a good market. These companies could not process and there was a huge loss of consumer confidence. Your customers want to make sure they have a reliable source of fresh Maryland crab.”

In 2019, the Labor Department issued visas on a first-come, first-served basis, and all nine processors were able to get H-2B visa workers.

This year, the Department of Labor also created a lottery system for their portion of the visa process, in addition to the Department of Homeland Security lottery, creating yet another hurdle for recipients.

Brooks, who runs Cambridge-based J.M. Clayton Seafood Company, was one of three lucky crab processors who were able to get visas. His company will have 88 H-2B visa workers arriving within a couple of weeks.

“We feel horrible for our colleagues,” Brooks said. “I mean, we’ve all been locked out before and know what it’s like, and it’s just horrible.”

Very few processors in Virginia were able to secure visas, Brooks said.

Processing houses that didn’t secure visas are dark, Brooks said. “The lights are off. Here we are just almost a month into our season and the lights are out. What do they tell their customers? What do they tell their crabbers? It’s a horrific situation.”

No Local Labor Pool

At picking houses, workers scoop meat from freshly caught crabs ― the process is laborious but quick and requires much skill. Local workers shy away from working the difficult job, especially because eight out of the nine picking houses are located on Hoopers Island, a Chesapeake Bay community of about 600 residents, about a 40-minute drive from the commercial center in Cambridge.

“What college graduate can you train to pick a can of crab meat in six minutes?” said Dayme Hahn, the manager of Faidley Seafood, a famous crab cake purveyor in Baltimore. “If you sit there and watch these people, you would say, ‘I could never do that.’”

And few workers want a seasonal job. Crabbing is a heavily regulated industry, with the Department of Natural Resources deciding when the harvest starts and ends each year ― usually sometime between April and November.

“What do those people do during the seven months they can’t work? Go on unemployment?” Hahn asked. “It has been a really good relationship with southern hemisphere workers.”

Most H-2B visa recipients who work as crab pickers are women from Mexico.

“It’s extraordinarily difficult work,” said Thurka Sangaramoorthy, a cultural and medical anthropologist who studies immigration to the Eastern Shore. “And there’s a lot of pressure.”

Sangaramoorthy says the women get paid in a piecemeal fashion, by how fast they can pick. They work very long hours, living in a house with other women they usually don’t know, while leaving children and family members behind.

“The Eastern Shore can be a difficult place to live in. It’s very sparse,” Sangaramoorthy said. “For some women they enjoy the peace and quiet and the idyllic kind of setting and for others it’s very difficult.”

But, this is a really important livelihood for them, Sangaramoorthy said.

And workers are important for the life of the crab industry.

“The [H-2B visa] program really is life or death for the business, it is,” said Janet Rippons, who runs Rippons Brothers Seafood, a crab processor that wasn’t able to secure any visas this year. Rippons has lived and worked on Hoopers Island her entire life and her family has been crabbing for generations.

Rippons Brothers was one of the last companies to use the H-2B visa program, when they began doing so in 1996. Companies that decided not to use the program went out of business.

“For whatever reason, those owners and operators refused to hire foreign workers,” Brooks said. “And now they’re all gone. Each and every one of those companies are gone.”

Rippons fears that without foreign workers, that could happen again.

“Believe you me, I want to be able to find somebody so that I can provide my own products,” Rippons said. But, in the 24 years since Rippons Brothers started using the H-2B visa program, only three or four locals have wanted a job, Rippons says.

“Will we always have Maryland crab meat? I don’t know,” Rippons said. “Finding Americans that are willing to do this job, it’s not happening.”

Driven Out of the Industry

A study conducted by Maryland’s Best Seafood (a marketing program of Maryland’s agriculture department) found that, without H-2B visa workers, income for watermen would drop by $12.5 million, processors would lose $37 million to $49 million in sales, Maryland would lose 914-1,367 jobs and the overall hit to the state’s economy could be $100 million to $150 million.

“This survey reinforces what we have learned in previous years: a lack of reliable access to H-2B workers poses a major threat to the future of this iconic industry,” Maryland Department of Agriculture Secretary Joe Bartenfelder said in a press release.

“We are at the point where I honestly fear that the Maryland crab industry is at the brink of never coming back,” Hahn said. “And that’s a very scary place to be. Especially for me, who ― that’s our whole business model. Our business model at Faidley’s is Maryland seafood.”

Faidley’s has been around for 130 years ― Hahn’s great grandfather started selling seafood in 1886. And Hahn’s family has been buying from Rippons’ family, and other Eastern Shore families, ever since.

Restaurants and purveyors can import crabs from foreign countries, usually Venezuela, more cheaply. They can also import from other states. But, many local restaurants want Maryland crab.

Brooks says commercial crabbers will have a hard time making a living, with few workers to process their factory crabs.

“It’s going to be depressed,” Brooks said. “There will be days they can’t sell their catch at all, and there will be days they can only sell part of their catch.”

Hahn says watermen will continue to catch crabs for processors that have pickers, and for people who want to steam them and eat them at home. But, with expenses like gas, docking and licensing, Hahn fears that it will push many out of the industry.

“They’re going to have to go to another industry to make a living,” Hahn said. “And some of them ― by the end of this year ― will have decided to get out completely.”

What’s more, Hahn says, is that you are either raised in the industry and know what to do, or you aren’t. Hahn fears that if this generation of watermen leaves the industry, there won’t be another.

‘A Critical Matter’

Brooks is working with Maryland’s U.S. Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Democrats, and U.S. Rep. Andrew Harris (R-Cockeysville) to find a permanent fix.

Industry advocates say that seafood shouldn’t be grouped with landscape and construction just because their food cannot be grown (agriculture receives H-2A visas, and is exempt from any sort of cap). They want the visa cap removed. And they want exemptions for returning workers, who usually go to the same employers every year.

The industry used to have an exemption, but it expired and hasn’t been taken up again.

A letter to the Department of Homeland Security ― signed by seven senators, including Van Hollen and Cardin ― called the visas a “critical matter.”

“Local seafood businesses earn their livelihoods based on perishable products and need H-2B workers to harvest and process their respective seafood products so they can sell those products,” the senators wrote. “If these local businesses lose a customer base one year, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to come back into the industry.”

For purveyors, processors and watermen, the situation looks dire. Even with a slowed economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry fears it will be scrambling for workers when demand picks up when things start back up.

“The whole Maryland crabbing industry is teetering on collapse,” Hahn said. “And, you know, when I listen to Janet Rippons and I listen to Jack Brooks, or I listen to these people down the Shore, my heart bleeds. Not just for them, but for us.”

By Samantha Hawkins

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Maryland News Tagged With: crabs, Maryland, pickers, visas, watermen

Less Seasonal Help, Virus Deliver One-Two Punch to Bay’s Blue Crab Industry

April 29, 2020 by Bay Journal

Crab season is off to a slow and foreboding start around the Chesapeake Bay, with many crabmeat processors crippled by an inability to import seasonal workers and by watermen worried they’ll be unable to sell all they can catch as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chilly, windy weather limited commercial harvests of blue crabs through much of April, the first full month of the season. Warming spring weather usually brings better fortunes, but those in the business of catching or picking crabs say they fear for their livelihoods amid the double whammy that’s hit the Bay’s most valuable fishery.

“It’s kind of a really scary situation,” said Bill Sieling, executive vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, which represents Maryland companies. “It just doesn’t look good.”

Many of the crabmeat processing businesses around the Bay are short-handed because they failed to get federal approval to bring in as many foreign workers as they have in previous years.

The Department of Homeland Security held a lottery in January to distribute a reduced pool of 33,000 H-2B visas nationwide to all of the landscaping, construction and other businesses seeking to bring in seasonal labor, mainly from Mexico and Central America. Under pressure, the department announced in March it would hand out another 35,000 visas, but shelved that in early April amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, only three of Maryland’s nine “picking houses,” as the crab processors are known, received any visas in the initial drawing. After missing out on the lottery, Lindy’s Seafood on Hoopers Island was looking at limping along with a half-dozen local workers.

“We could sell more product, we just can’t produce it,” said sales manager Aubrey Vincent.

Then, in late April, she said she got federal approval to bring back 61 workers who’d picked crabmeat at the plant last fall.

“It’s not all of my people,” she said, noting that the plant typically hires more than 100 seasonal workers. Still, she said, “it’s better than no people.”

The luck was as bad or worse in Virginia, where Graham & Rollins Inc., the biggest crabmeat processor in the state and one of the largest on the East Coast, has been idled after coming up snake-eyes in the visa lottery. The company, a fixture on the Hampton waterfront for nearly 80 years, had asked for 85 visas.

“Without workers, we’re looking at closure,” said Johnny Graham. “The plant’s been mothballed, the power’s pretty much cut off [and] the water supply’s being cut off.”

J. M. Clayton Co. in Cambridge was among the lucky ones. Co-owner Jack Brooks said the company got its request granted via the lottery for about 60 visas.

But then coronavirus intervened. Brooks said that with restaurants shut down and many people losing jobs, the demand for crabmeat is off, and he’s not sure when or if it will come back. So, the company has arranged to bring in “a few more than 20” workers for now.

“We’re looking at probably 30–45% capacity at best,” Brooks said.

Though unable to process much crabmeat, processors say they’re still able to sell live or steamed crabs. There appears to be a robust demand for the limited supply available in this slow-starting season.

Graham said the retail seafood store operated by his company has been selling crabs for carryout like it was the 4th of July, the traditional peak of demand for steamed crabs.

Debbie Fitzhugh sells fresh crab meat at a new service window at the J. M. Clayton Co. in Cambridge. Photo by Dave Harp/Bay Journal News Service

J. M. Clayton also has seen an uptick in retail crab sales, Brooks said. In response, the company has set up a makeshift drive-up window where customers can place orders and pick them up.

“People blow a horn, we go to the window and talk to them,” he said. That way, he explained, “people don’t walk in like they used to” and risk getting or spreading coronavirus.

Processors said they’re taking steps to try to keep their workers healthy. Brooks said Clayton is limiting the workforce in the picking room so workers are spaced 6 feet apart and wearing masks.

Watermen aren’t as worried about social distancing but they do wonder if they’ll be able to sell their catch when warmer weather usually brings more crabs into their boats.

“There haven’t been many crabs so far,” said Jeff Harrison, president of the Talbot Watermen Association. But demand is off, with restaurants closed and many markets not buying much seafood.

“Right now,” he added, “there really isn’t a problem selling them.”

Harrison said he’s worried about how long the coronavirus shutdowns are going to last. They already cut short what had turned out to be a good wild oyster harvest, he said. Now, even if restaurants and other businesses start to reopen in the coming month, he foresees a season where watermen won’t earn as much for what they catch — and feel lucky just to be able to sell it at all.

Already, the dockside price has been about 30% or more below what it was at the start of the season last year, Harrison said. Meanwhile, he noted, the price of razor clams used as bait has gone up.

The $2 trillion in COVID-19 economic relief passed by Congress in late March included $300 million for the seafood industry. But that’s to be distributed nationwide, and industry officials say it’s far from enough to keep everyone afloat. Just in Virginia alone, losses to all commercial fisheries are estimated to range from $53 million to $68 million, according to data compiled by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

“Even if it lasts another month, it’s still going to be a mess,” Harrison said. “And if it goes two months, we’re done.”

Amid news reports that air and water quality have improved as a result of so many businesses closed and people ordered to stay home, Harrison said the effort to halt the spread of coronavirus is probably helping the Bay. But, he added, it’s “not the way we wanted it to happen.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Archives Tagged With: bay, coronavirus, Covid-19, crabs, seafood, watermen

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