North Carolina’s commercial fishing advocates are raising alarms over proposed blue crab harvest restriction, just as the Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) removed the expected vote from this week’s meeting agenda.
According to an updated agenda posted on Nov. 19, the action item to consider new management strategies under the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3 has been taken off the table. The shift comes days after the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition submitted a resolution opposing additional restrictions on the state’s most valuable commercial fishery.
During its Nov. 5 meeting in Morehead City, the coalition- which was formed earlier this year by coastal county lawmakers- voted to oppose any new harvest measures until the next blue crab stock assessment is completed in 2026. Members argued that without a reliable assessment, major changes would be premature.
Currituck County Commissioner Janet Rose told the group that fishermen in her area have been catching 50 to 60 bushels a day. “If they’re cut to 30 bushels next year, that’s a 40 or 50 percent cut,” Rose said, adding that this reduction is going to hurt crab picking houses, and the towns that rely on them.
Proposals under discussion included a year-round statewide prohibition on crab trawling beginning Jan. 1, new regional trip limits from September through December, and maintaining current seasonal closures. But the agenda documents note that “these recommendations should be viewed as a first step rather than a comprehensive solution,” citing fishery-independent indicators that show little improvement since the last assessment, which ended in 2016.
According to the Coastal Review, Glenn Skinner, who is executive director of the N.C. Fisheries Association, was brought in as a consultant to the coalition. He told the group that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, but “I think the most important thing here is we do not have a stock assessment.”
They tried last year to update the stock assessment that was used for the last management measures “and when they added a few extra years of data, for lack of a better word, it went haywire and they determined it could not be used. So, we do not have a stock assessment for blue crab. Therefore, we do not have a stock status to say if it’s overfish or if over fishing is occurring.”
The MFC meets Nov. 19-20 in Wrightsville Beach with public comment sessions scheduled for both days.
