The Chesapeake Bay blue crab population is reeling, facing some of the lowest numbers in history. Officials are desperately hoping that steps taken to protect females last year will allow the fishery to rebound from the edge of disaster. But those efforts are also mired in a debate over the best way to protect the crabs.

Some watermen say the steps taken by Virginia, Maryland and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission to rescue crabs after the population’s free fall in 2008 haven’t worked. The states cut the number of females that can be fished by about 30 percent. When the stock rose only to fall hard again last year, Virginia cut the number of females that could be fished by an additional 10 percent during the spawning run.

Smithsonian scientists worry that efforts to save females might produce a serious side effect: overfishing males. When male crabs decline, those remaining mate more often, and sometimes can’t regenerate their sperm supply quickly enough, according to a study by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Read the full story at the Washington Post>>

Want to read more about Chesapeake blue crab? Click here...