Shut it down

 

There are a lot of ways that this could be interpreted, and in some viewpoints and presentations it could be seen as humorous.  But the underlying trend is too concerning to be funny.  

Still, you'd think that there could be crab sperm donation center, don't you?

New challenge for Chesapeake Bay watermen: A shortage of crab sperm

"In mid-May, the two state agencies that run the survey — the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science — made an announcement with more dire news. Only 227 million crabs had been counted, the lowest number on record since the survey began in 1990.

The survey revealed a plunge in the number of female crabs, from 158 million in 2021 to 97 million this year. It also found a three-year continuation of a below-average number of juvenile crabs, estimated at 101 million.

“There were two big red flags,” said Allison Colden, Maryland senior fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “The lowest abundance on record since the survey began and also that we have lower numbers now than when Maryland and Virginia requested and were granted a federal fisheries disaster declaration in 2008. It’s hard to believe that the population was higher then than it is now.” "

So, as to the title of this post;  stop fooling around. Shut down the crab fishery completely for two years, and let the populations recover.  We in Maryland can get our crabs from elsewhere for a couple of years.  The resource is too valuable to risk it.

Seriously.  Let's make lionfish cakes instead of crab cakes.

Let them make (more) crabs.