Crabs In Trouble Again, Climate Change Not To Blame

Inside Hook, Here’s Why Blue Crab Has Disappeared From Menus Around DC

As though DC restaurateurs hadn’t suffered enough in the wake of the pandemic, many local menus were shockingly devoid of a stalwart staple this season: blue crabs.

The about-face at restaurants like Ketch 22, Point Crab House & Grill, Woodmont Grill, and more had nothing to do with a lack of consumer demand. Rather, shockingly low crab populations in the Chesapeake contributed to soaring wholesale costs – $60 per pound instead of an average of about $20 – forcing the hands of restaurateurs. Other establishments like Bethesda Crab House or True Chesapeake Oyster Company coped with the shortage differently, opting to continue to serve crab, albeit with prices to match the hike – $24 per crab cake sandwich at the latter, instead of $19. Still others chose to eat the difference.

Trotlining for crabs

I don't care much about the price of crabs in DC, except that it's evidence for the health of the population. 

Professor Thomas Miller, director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and a member of Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee, says we should have seen this coming. Each year for the past twenty or so, Miller explains, a winter dredge survey is performed on the Chesapeake to get a read on the season ahead.

“Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay overwinter in the sediment; they’re not up and around,” he says. “And we take that opportunity to survey them when it’s easier to do.”

This past winter, the dredge survey had shown a sharp decrease in population: from 405 million in 2020 to 282 million in 2021. Juvenile crabs, in particular, hit their lowest level since 1990.

 

And yet, we hear from a great grandma who crabs down in more southern Maryland, that she's had one of her best years in a while. 

“The abundance of this winter of very small crabs was the lowest we’ve seen,” says Miller. “Those small crabs were supposed to join the fishery in sort of September [or] October. So the fact that there is no abundance now shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everyone should have known that was coming.”

What’s surprising to Miller, then, isn’t that we’re experiencing a late-season dearth, but rather that the early stages of the season was also bad, seeing as adult crab populations in the winter survey weren’t unusually low.

“We expected this portion of the season to be bad,” he says. “And so it’s proving. We didn’t expect the early portion to be as bad as it was.”

 

It’s difficult to pinpoint just one reason for this shortage. Some point to climate change, though Miller is unconvinced.

“Blue crabs occur from sort of southern New England all the way down the Atlantic coast of the U.S., through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean down into Argentina,” he says. “The center of their distribution is in much warmer water than occurs along the U.S. Atlantic coast. If anything, you would have thought them to do better under a climate change scenario, not do worse.”

Variations in the crab abundance seem largely driven by weather at critical times in the spring when the crab zoea (larvae) a ride currents into the Bay from the ocean. 

Still, when stocks are down, it would make sense the limit the harvest some rather than continue to hammer them.  

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Polyana Viana and FMJRA 2.0: Sedan Delivery ready at The Other McCain.