As the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population continues to rebound, scientists say harvests also are increasing as they hoped and predicted.

“The number of blue crabs has increased very dramatically over the last three to four years,” said Lynn Fegley, a scientist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

A consortium of scientists from Maryland and Virginia along with other representatives from academia and government released a report this month outlining the Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population and issued several recommendations to help the trend continue.

One recommendation made by the group, known as the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee and overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was to better track crabs harvested recreationally, possibly through licensing.

“Recreational catch and effort remains poorly quantified in the Chesapeake Bay,” according to the report.

Fegley, who chairs the committee, said that as word spreads of the blue crab rebound, more people may start crabbing recreationally. In Maryland, some recreational crabbers are not required to have a license, including those crabbing from their own waterfront properties or from a commercial fishing pier.

“We don’t really know. We don’t know how many recreational crabbers there are or how many crabs they harvest,” she said.

A full licensing for recreational crabbers would be difficult, but beneficial in knowing how many crabs are taken each year. Currently, regulators use an estimate of 8 percent of the commercial harvest to account for recreational harvests.

“They catch a lot more of the catch than DNR gives them credit,” said Tommy Zinn, president of Calvert County Watermen’s Association. He said there needs to be better surveying of the recreational crabbers and guessed that their harvest is probably closer to 30 percent of the commercial harvest.

The report recommends that conservation measures continue, and suggests the management agencies work to increase the number of blue crabs in the bay to 215 million female crabs and 200 million male crabs. These extra numbers would help protect the population from catastrophic losses in case of challenges like a dramatic cold snap.

The committee also recommended that new harvest target levels for female crabs be established to help better preserve the stock.

“We feel the regulations they have in place were sufficient. They have helped increase the stock,” Zinn said.

Zinn said commercial harvests continue to be good the last few years, especially since winter dredging for female crabs in Virginia was banned.

“That restriction alone did more good than anything,” he said.

Zinn said he is glad that the management agencies are starting to work with watermen, who now have some say in blue crab management activities.

“We just have to keep a balancing act,” and make sure the crab population stays at a good level while not putting watermen out of business, Zinn said.

Annual winter dredge surveys give scientists and regulators a fairly accurate prediction of how many crabs will be in the bay the coming year, she said. And based on allowable harvest amounts, firm numbers are defined for total catch amounts allowed.

The 2010 Maryland commercial crab harvest from the bay and its tributaries was estimated at 53.4 million pounds. The harvest from Virginia that year was reported to be 26.9 million pounds while an additional 4.5 million pounds were harvested from the waters regulated by the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.

Combined, this was the highest harvest since 1994, according to the report.

Final harvest numbers from 2011 are not yet available.

“The stock is in very good condition,” Fegley said. The fishery levels have been below target levels for the last three years, she said, likely because of increased regulations, especially on female crab harvests, and “good luck from Mother Nature.”

“Even living under the restrictions, they harvested a lot of crabs. That’s how you hope it works. You bite the bullet now and it pays off,” she said.

Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, acknowledged the more restrictive regulations may have helped the crab population a bit, but he maintains the rebound is more due to natural conditions than anything else.

“Mother Nature did that. They came back up and down the whole East Coast,” Simns said.

He said regulations, especially hourly and daily time limits, have kept the watermen from being able to harvest enough to even reach the allowed target set by regulators.

“Mostly, time limits are a pain for us,” he said.

Another recommendation by the committee is for management agencies, which include the states of Maryland and Virginia as well as the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, to consider a quota-based system.

“That is not specifically catch-share,” Fegley said.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is studying a quota system for watermen catching crabs in the state's portion of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Under some quota systems, a predefined total catch can be divided among licensed watermen based on different factors.

What the report is recommending, Fegley said, is that each jurisdiction receive a portion of the overall allowable harvest and that each jurisdiction monitor and regulate that as it deems fit.

jyeatman@somdnews.com