Blue crab population increases by 60%, stock considered sustainable

The size of blue crabs is largely driven by water temperature. Increased carbon pollution and warming waters actually cause a blue crab’s shell to grow abnormally large, but there tends to be less meat underneath. Larger blue crabs are not necessarily a good thing, as it indicates climate change impacts to the ecosystem around them. A study from the University of North Carolina found that blue crabs will “supersize their growth” in the next 75 to 100 years due to carbon pollution (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2013/04/07/a0c29f48-972f-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html?_=ddid-3-1564594440). Warming waters may lead to larger blue crabs, but that also means a disruption to the entire ecosystem (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/07/31/climate-change-will-spark-blue-crab-baby-boom-then-predators-will-relocate-south-eat-them/).

Why are the Blue crabs so much larger in general in the Chesapeake than the GSB?

Since the Bay is such a shallow estuary, any little change can impact plant and animal species. Since we’ve been having a drier summer, the increased salinity from less fresh water entering the Bay, and potentially warmer water temperatures, can lead the crabs to seek out different regions of the Bay that are more comfortable to them.

Hi ..happy cr@bbing. I’m crabbing in va , ocean view, Norfolk. The crabs were plentiful two weeks ago. They are all but gone now. Do you know wha5 happened ?
Thx
Dor .

The 2019 Blue Crab Advisory Report is released each year by the Chesapeake Bay Program and is informed by the results from the winter dredge survey (winter 2019), conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, and harvest data from the previous year (2018). Essentially, the winter dredge survey is an estimate of the blue crabs living in the Bay, but it uses a stratified random design to calculate its findings. For detailed information on how the survey is conducted, please visit: https://dnr.maryland.gov/fisheries/Pages/blue-crab/dredge.aspx and https://www.vims.edu/research/units/programs/bc_winter_dredge/index.php. Commercial harvest numbers are reported to the respective state agencies each year.

While this number is significantly higher than last year, it is not considered to be an explosion of crabs. The winter dredge survey has estimated as many as over 800 million crabs in the Bay in the early 1990s. Historical data can be viewed here: https://www.chesapeakebay.net/state/blue_crabs.

While this sounds like wonderful news, I’d like to know more about how the data is gathered. It sounds like a lot of assumptions to me. And if it is true I’d like to know more about the impact the crab explosion has on the rest of the marine ecosystems.