Take me back to this week's issue | Take me back to the archives

Black Watermen of the Chesapeake Bay	Burton on the Bay
I Swam the Bay	Laughing Gourment
Leapin’ Lizards ‘n Jumpin’ Macho Men: A Summer Film Preview	Who's Here
Dock of the Bay	Creature Feature
Editorial	Sky Facts
Letters to the Editor	Governor’s Youth Fishing Derby
Commentary	Not Just for Kids
Bay Reflections	Politalk

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Bay Boardings on the Rise?
Its not like California, where fishermen call the Coast Guard “marine Gestapo.”

But there’s tension on the Chesapeake Bay because of the Coast Guard’s ongoing boardings of fishing vessels.

Operation Full Court Press—39 one day last month from the Bay Bridge to Solomons—turned up no problems, with the “vast majority” of boats, the Coast Guard reported last week.

Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources took part in the operation, aimed primarily at “six-packs”—charter boats licensed to carry no more than six passengers.

Expired flares and failure to post emergency check lists were the most common violations.

If that’s the extent of the problems, why the elaborate boarding operation, charter captains ask?

“It’s harrassment, pure and simple. And it’s embarrassing as hell when they jump aboard your boat, especially when you have a first-time party,” said one captain who was visited.

Joseph F. Rupp, president of the 300-member Maryland Charter Boat Association, is more diplomatic in his assessment. But he is no less frustrated as he described efforts by charter boat captains to get help from the Coast Guard interpreting a maze of regulations.

“We’ve asked them and asked them to send us rules to follow in plain English. But we haven’t heard back,” said Rupp, who operates a boat out of Rose Haven.

Rupp would like to understand, for instance, why the Coast Guard sometimes interprets the rules differently. Why is it, he wonders, that some six-packs get in trouble for failing to have orange life rings on board when the regulations seem to permit any color?

And like most captains, Rupp is puzzled as to why the Coast Guard refuses to do its inspections dockside, skipping the spectacles and interrupting fishing trips.

Lt.(J.G.) Kyle McAvoy, of the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office, says the Guard will take calls from captains with questions about rules. But moving inspections to the dock, he says, would cancel one of the reasons for the boarding: to see if six-packs are taking out more than their allotted passengers.

“What the Coast Guard is looking for, ultimately, is the safety of the passengers,” he says.

McAvoy added that the Coast Guard is considering ways to better coordinate with fishing captains. And Rupp said that Maryland’s charter boat operators will do what it takes to get along with the Coast Guard.

“We always looked on the Coast Guard as our friends and that’s the way it should be,” Rupp said.

Playing Tag with Rockfish
What happens if you catch a rockfish sporting an orange “spaghetti tag?”

Don’t panic.

Fishery managers and biologists from North Carolina to Massachusetts want to learn how to increase the rockfish population. They’ve tagged more than 130,000 fish since 1985. If you catch a tagged fish here’s what they want from you: the tag number, and date, location, and method of capture. Save the tag if you can’t write the information down and fish at the same time. Then call to report a tagged rockfish: 1/800/448-8322.

Why put yourself out? If you want to have fewer restrictions on catching rockfish, you’ll help. The tags give information on where the fish are numerous, how old they are, their size and migration patterns. Tags are the most important source of information for making changes in fishing regulations.

Even if you catch a striped bass—as rockfish are more precisely called—out of season or one too small to keep, record the tag information before tossing it back. Your reward: Continued attention to restoration of the rockfish population and a cap printed with the logo “Participant, Striped Bass Restoration,” or five dollars per tag for more than four tags.

Facts learned so far by the tagging program:

• Rockfish sometimes leave the safety of bays and estuaries to forage along the coastline.
  
• Fish released in the Bay have migrated over 1,000 miles, as far north as New Brunswick, Canada.
  
• Ten to 20 percent of adult wild striped bass die each year from causes other than fishing.
  

Reptile Pardon Program?
Beat the rush. Free your pet lizard now.

In government’s never-ending drive to regulate, Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources has proposed regulations on how many slimy and crawling creatures you may call your own.

In fact, DNR is holding a public meeting on June 17 to tell you more about it. If you’re worried about parting with that salamander named Fred, you’d better head up to Hickory Ridge Community Center in Columbia at 7 pm to protest.

Or get in touch with the DNR by June 22, the end of the public comment period. Otherwise, prepare to open your cage.

Under the state’s plan, you won’t be able to have over four native snakes, lizards, salamanders or turtles. But you can keep up to 25 frogs, toads or newts without a permit. Whew, what a relief.

Of course, you can squirrel away a few more creatures if you ante up $25 to the state for a permit. But there’s a catch. Instead of finding your creatures in the woods, you have to buy them from a pet store.

You guessed it: pet stores will have to get permits, too.

There are exceptions, if you’re up to them. One of them is keeping reptiles for food. In other words, if you plead fondness for lizard pie, the state might give you a break.

Then again, you may need a license to eat it.

HOMES FOR BAY POEMS?
Dust off those old verses. Better yet, take a pen to the beach for the awakening of one of these long, glorious days around the solstice.

For up the road in Maryland, they’re about ready to judge the North American Open Poetry Contest. Deadline is June 30. Over 250 skilled or aspiring poets will share $12,000 in prizes and many will be published in coming anthologies.

What do judges want? First of all, keep it under 20 lines. Put your name and address at the top of the page, and hope you make the first cut into the top 25 per cent of what could be thousands of entries.

Beyond that, the critics will be seeking different qualities.

“I look for language, the way it flows,” said Caroline Sullivan, one of the three main judges.

Another is partial to poetic form, while a third puts a premium on creativity.

Sullivan cautions that there’s no way to predict the winners. But she notes a trend in submissions.

“This year, a lot of people are moving away from traditional poetic forms toward free verse, which might be a reflection of society,” she said.

It may or may not be a good omen that the last two grand prize winners came from Maryland: most recently, Auburn J. Lamb of Silver Spring and, before that, Roger F. Powell, of Bethesda.

And if you aren’t a winner this time, don’t despair: A new contest begins soon.

(Send entries to the National Library of Poetry, 11419 Cronidge Dr., PO Box 704-XZ, Owings Mills, MD 21117. Phone 410/356-2000.)

Way Downstream...Fish researchers studying tiny otoliths—inner ear stones—are learning incredible things about the lives and habits of our scaly friends. They can know which polluted waters a fish swam in months before it was caught.

Bet they didn’t know that a fish can be Smokey the Bear. Forest Service officials in Montana think they might be able to predict forest fires in the Northern Rockies by the patterns of fish hundreds of miles west in the Pacific Ocean.

The farther north barracuda and tuna swim, the more likely that late spring and summer rains will diminish the threat of fires, according to a report in the the Billings Gazette...

In Florida, a new study may not bode well for Chesapeake Bay waterfront dwellers. Or perhaps their great grandchildren.

The study predicts that Florida’s sea level will rise two feet in the next century because of global warming—caused by a build-up of pollution in the upper atmosphere.

The study by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and the Mote Marine Laboratory predicts flooded condos, messed-up water supplies and disappearing beaches.

It fails to note the windfall for people who stand to become waterfront property owners...

This week’s creature feature comes to us all the way from Australia, home of a worm 10 feet long and as thick as a sausage. The tale of the endangered Gippsland Earthworm comes to us courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, whose stuffy readers may not fully appreciate it.

As the story goes, two towns have waged combat for tourists drawn by the lure of the world’s biggest worm. A town 20 miles away from where the worm actually lives somehow has won by building a giant concrete replica of the worm.

Now, rather than seeing the real thing, tourists pay $5 to walk through the concrete worm, listen to its recorded murmers and smell its essense. This weird tour is billed as a means to get a worm’s eye view of the world.

Somebody needs to point out that worms don’t have eyes.

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SAVE THE CRABS, SAVE THE BAY
Like most of you, we cringe at the thought of losing freedoms. But signs abound in the Bay that crabs are seriously threatened because of overharvesting. Clearly, a remedy is needed, and Gov. William Donald Schaefer has moved wisely in proposing restrictions.

Schaefer’s plan is as broad as the Bay itself, encompassing everyone from weekend chicken-neckers to full-fledged watermen to commercial crabbers pretending they’re not.

The 300-pot limit and the 5 pm crabbing cutoff might prove to be important curbs on watermen on a Bay where the number of pots has doubled in 10 years. Likewise, the one- or two-bushel limits and the 500-foot limitation on trot line length could reel in greedy “recreational” crabbers.

But the real issue here is licensing, and we need to be prepared for the direction in which we’re heading. One of the most far-reaching of the governor’s initial proposals would eliminate over 13,000 of the so-called non-commercial licenses.

Many of these crabbers partake of the Bay’s bounty and sell their catch in an extra-legal way.

This change would serve to protect watermen, who are headed toward monumental licensing shifts of their own.

By freezing the number of commercial licenses at 3,000, as Schaefer proposes, the state would be telling people that they no longer can aspire to a time-honored way of life. The key here is tightening a system in which three times that number of licenses may exist in one form or another.

What we’re really talking about here is moving boldly into a new Era of Limits, where licenses skyrocket in value and the once wide-open Bay resembles the closely regulated fisheries of Alaska and the Northwest.

Losing freedom is no fun, but the alternative is worse.

US AND YOU: BURTON ON BOARD
He needs no introduction. Nevertheless, we are happy to announce that with this issue, Bill Burton joins New Bay Times to bring you the finest outdoors column on the Chesapeake Bay.

As you know, for many years Bill was a front-running columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun and The Sun. He’s a master of magazine writing, not to mention radio and television.

For New Bay Times, Bill will go beyond sharing his well-honed skills when it comes to fishing, hunting and Bay sports.

In these pages starting this week, he will display some of his broader wisdom about the outdoors and the environment. Expect him to be provocative.

Bringing Bill Burton on board is yet another step in our mission to give you with a newspaper brimming with fine journalism and tips for quality living along the Chesapeake.

We Baysiders are a community of interest; we have common goals to preserve the Bay for recreation and business. At New Bay Times, our aim is to forge unity along the Bay rather than highlight divisions between people and towns.

Many of you have told us and shown us that you agree. We thank you once again—readers, subscribers and advertisers—for the outpouring of support in the months since New Bay Times began.

And we reward you with the one and only Bill Burton.

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Sorely Needed Stimulus
Dear New Bay Times:
As president of the Maryland Geological Society and editor of its quarterly newsletter, “The Rostrum,” I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you and the staff of the New Bay Times and in some small sense to herald the birth of a much-needed periodical.

Life and events in the Chesapeake Bay and tidewater areas have always been of concern to me. Indeed, I spend much of my spare time collecting fossils along the Bay. I have occasion to meet many people with differing interests in a variety of milieus. I also frequent quite a few Southern Maryland restaurants and shops.

One of the thrills of collecting along the Bay is that it allows me to interact with fairly unique and diversified groups of people.

Since I am interested in the perpetuation of this “special flavor” in what I do, I endorse the newspaper committed to its presentation—New Bay Times.

The editorial focus on recreation activities in the Bay area— together with environmental, agricultural and maritime issues—is sorely needed. A newspaper of this caliber can be nothing but a beneficial stimulus and incentive to the region it serves.

I intend to subscribe and I hope that many others do as well.

Richard W. Grier Jr., Baltimore

Licensed to be Rude?
Dear New Bay Times:
Bravo. Your article on rude people at the MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) hit the nail on the head. We finally quit going to the Largo office because people were grumpy and short with us. We’d rather drive an extra half-hour than put up with it.

We pay their salaries so the MVA people work for us. But you wouldn’t know it by the way they act.

D. Phillips, Prince Georges County

In-Touch in a Kayak
Dear New Bay Times:
I’ve really enjoyed your kayaking articles. I think they’re right on the money for pointing out the new way to enjoy the Bay.

The open Bay water can be dangerous; inexperienced paddlers should not attempt it. But near shore, kayaking and canoeing are wonderful ways to get close up with the shoreline, birds, wildlife, and underwater grasses. Nothing else puts you so immediately in touch with the resource.

Billy Mills, Bayscapes Program Manager, Chesapeake Bay Alliance, Richmond, Virginia

Lively Coverage
Dear New Bay Times:
On behalf of the Southern Anne Arundel Chamber membership and South County Festival Steering Committee, I want to warmly thank you and your staff for its welcome support and enthusiasm for our pilot effort in presenting a Southern Maryland cultural smorgasbord with our 1993 festival.

Your article in New Bay Times two days prior to the festival was lively and credited some of the key people whose personal and professional style made the process so worthwhile.

Bob Besse

Good for the Chesapeake
Dear New Bay Times:
Your new creation is perfect! New Bay Times will be good for the Chesapeake. Wonderful story on the Bay and tomatoes-just the sort of journalism I love. I'm enclosing a check for a one-year subscription.

Sue Eslinger, Bonita Springs, FLA

Chuckle Time
Dear New Bay Times:
As a working mother of young children, I seldom get a minute to myself. But tonight my husband is working and the girls went to bed early, so I stole a moment to read your paper. I want you to know I smiled and chuckled all the way through it. It’s wonderful.

Gail Martinez, Fairhaven, Maryland

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Revive a Tradition: Let the Summer Solstice Warm Your Heart
by Donna Henes
Original to AlterNet

Since the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the sun has been inching its way back into our lives. Rising slightly earlier each morning and setting a minute or two later every night, it graces us with light gradually gained. The change, the shift, is at first imperceptibly slow. But it is steady, and soon the minute-by-minute accumulation of daylight asserts itself in measures of hours.

By the half-way point in the annual solar swing, the spring equinox, the days have become about three hours longer in most of the United States.

That’s about 15 hours on the Chesapeake. In Sweden, this is indeed the season of the midnight sun. At the North Pole, the sun doesn’t set at all.

The seasonal ascendence of light and temperature is not—despite popular belief—due to our distance from the sun, but to the degree of directness of its rays. It would be logical, on the face of it, to assume that in the summer the earth approaches closest to the sun, and that we are farthest away in the cold, dark of winter. Wrong! The earth reaches the point on our orbit that is closest to the sun, in winter (January 3, 1993). Conversely, during summer we attain the farthest reach of our range from the sun (July 4, 1993).

Though the distance from the sun is greatest in the summer, it is at the summer solstice that the sun sits highest in the sky. Its steep path is angled directly overhead. Vertical. Its energy aimed arrowlike straight down on us.

For days before beginning its descent, the sun stands sentinel at dawn. It seems to stand stark still in the sky, which is what solstice means: sun stands still.

In earlier times, people built structures to track the course of the sun. These solar observatories were designed to precisely determine the days of the solstices: the two days, opposite in the year, which are the times of greatest extreme. The summer’s longest day had to be noticed so preparations could be made for survival during the coming cold.

Indigenous Europeans, predating the Druids who usually get the credit, build many such sun shrines. Stonehenge, the most famous standing stone circle, has its main axis in perfect alignment with the summer solstice sunrise.

Strikingly similar monuments to the movements of the heavens were built by the ancestors of the tribes of the Great Plains of the northern United States and Canada. There are more than 50 known medicine wheels, some dating back 2500 years. These sunburstlike designs—wheels with 28 spokes—were laid out in rock on the grasslands. They, too, were positioned in exact orientation to the solstice sunrise.

The Aztecs of Mexico, the Meso-American Maya, the Inca of Peru, the Chinese and the Egyptians all left architectural testimony to their astronomical sophistication and solstice supplication.

The summer solstice is also a lover’s holiday. Age-old customs and myths encourage a summer mating season to ensure successful procreation. The Roman poet Ovid was advised to delay his daughter’s wedding “until the Ides of June.” In England, the solstice is called Midsummer, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream unites two pairs of lovers. June weddings remain in style, though brides may not know why.

Even today, much of the world revers the rising sun. Throughout Europe, Catholic Canada, Central and South America, many stay awake this shortest night of the year to watch the solstice sunrise. And to this day, the people of the Taos Pueblo race up the mountain to welcome the rising solstice sun.

Some people feel even stronger ties to the sun. To fulfill vows made at times of deep stress or danger, famine or battle, Native North Americans dance for up to four days facing the sun, suspended from a pole in the center of a circle by cords threaded through their skin. Sun dancers sacrifice their flesh, thirst and hunger, their pain and their power to transcend pain, not for themselves alone but so that the tribe shall thrive.

If more of us who hide from the sun felt the warming of this summer’s solstice, our whole world might thrive.

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By Sonia Linebaugh

Thursday. 5:45 am. Light filters up the sky pulling dawn behind it. Sitting on the deck with my second cup of coffee I feel myself falling onto a featherbed of silence. A chorus of insects sparkles along its edge. From the house the refrigerator hums. The drone of an early boat drives across my mind to the sweet, sad co-o-o-coo of a mourning dove. The shush of the Bay lies beneath the morning twitters, trills, and chirps of the worm-hunters. A car crunches on gravel. Above all—beneath all—lies silence. Enough silence to sustain me through another day. Later a visitor asks, “Is it always this quiet here?” I laugh. “Come back on the weekend.”

Saturday. 8:58. I drink my coffee late beneath a high, bright, already hot sun. The rush of the surf hovers just above the silence. The first chain saw of the weekend begins—far enough away to pass for a mechanical insect.

9:08. A second chain saw starts up right next door. Between our houses, a mulberry tree generous with shade, short-cake complementing berries, and purple stains gives up branches to tidiness. The birds continue to sing and whistle. A child calls to a dog. A distant car mumbles. A screen door slams. A ladder clanks. A wood bee bumbles by. The sun slides higher.

9:22. The chain saw moves further away. A mulcher takes its place. An airplane drones to the northeast. Cars crunch on gravel. The Bay again inserts its shush. The mulcher falls silent. A lawn mower begins. Then another. My Saturday visitor asks, “Is it always this quiet?” I laugh. “Yes. It's always this quiet.”

Another week.
Wednesday. 8:15 pm. My daughter and I flop on separate sofas, sticky with the August heat of this June evening. The black and white cat claims the wisp of breeze at the window. Thunder growls low and continuously from the west.

8:20. My husband calls us to the deck where we delight in the menace of the sky. A long rolling prong of pink-orange clouds defined by a white edge that looks handdrawn pushes aggressively across the low gray sky. The back yard darkens suddenly, then the front.

8:30. Lightning attacks begin to the northwest moving with appropriate lightning speed to the southeast—close. We retreat inside to watch the show now in front of the house and out into the Bay. We ooh and aah as if at a fireworks display. One, two, three sometimes four or five crooked arrows throw their light shafts down the sky. One forked stroke sizzles close enough to make us jump and wonder why the lights haven’t gone out.

8:45. The sky, dark now with an inky blue on the edges of the storm, gives up its rain at last. We rush to close windows just as the air finally cools enough to breathe—the fresh smell mixed with the scent of honeysuckle and flowering privet hedge.

8:58. The rain has has followed the lightning across the Bay leaving deliciously cool air in its wake. The windows are open. Diffuse sheet lightning fluctuates afar on the Eastern Shore.

9:00. Plug the t.v. back in. It’s time for Home Improvement.

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Siren Sounds of a Coming Crab War
by Bill Burton

Pardon me, William Butler Yeats, but though he isn’t young like the hero in “The Land of Heart’s Desire,” Gov. William Donald Schaefer has chosen to tread a way none trod before. With much fanfare, Maryland’s outspoken and oft controversial boss waded into the Bay to tinker with our special relationship with our prized crustacean, the blue crab of the Chesapeake.

It is appropriate the governor chose to get his feet wet on the issue of man’s insatiable appetite for crabs before our beloved tidewater creatures join shad, rockfish, canvasbacks, Canada geese and even yellow perch on a list of endangered, threatened or even troubled species.

Much fanfare accompanied the recent Annapolis press conference, promptly followed by a widespread mix of gripes and blessings. It was obvious this was just the first shot in what promises to be second only to the rockfish moratorium in controversy. But this is nothing new for the battle-scarred guv who has alternately roused our ire and our support for his various whims, brainstorms and sometimes downright logical paths of action.

Contrary to his usual swashbuckling approach, he opened this battle on a conservative note with assurances crabs are not yet in trouble, but could or would be unless we promptly implement some severe restrictions, a few of which could come this year.

Immediately following announcement of his plans, researched and mapped out by the Department of Natural Resources, crab catchers took sides. Alas, it was the same tired old story; commercial versus recreational (who thought of the crabs?). Each side figured the other should make the sacrifices. No one wanted to bite the bullet; lead has a bitter taste.

When it finally sank in that curtailments would be endured equally, there were many on both sides who suddenly concluded that maybe crabs aren’t threatened after all. Same old story; this time a new species involved. Thankfully the governor doesn’t let go when he has a tiger by the tail.

His proposals:

• Require recreational crabbers be licensed, either under the $7 tidewater fishing license program or a crabbing license such as one the General Assembly rejected earlier this year. DNR claims it needs licensing to get a handle on the number of sports crabbers.
  
  
• Cap commercial licenses at about the 3,000 active ones now in use, while eliminating the approximately 13,500 so-called non-commercial licenses purchased by sports crabbers who want to catch more than their limit—some of whom are accused of selling their catches, which means competition for commercial crabbers. Another sore point.
  
  
• Limit the number of crab pots to 300 per license; no limit now with some crabbers working more than 1,000.
  
  
• Impose a 3 am to 5 pm time limit for commercial crabbing; sunrise to sunset for recreational crabbers. Currently, no time limits.
  
  
• Require pots to be modified to allow undersized crabs to escape. With “sports” potters an escape mechanism incorporated to allow turtles, muskrats, ducks and other water-oriented creatures to escape from from pots set out on private property and not tended on a regular basis.
  
  
• Allow 150 feet between traps and trotlines. Currently it’s 50 feet.
  
  
• Restrict recreational catches to one bushel a day, two to the boat. Currently, in some instances it can be more.
  
  
• Impose a limit of five bushels a person; some so-called recreational crabbers are now exempt.
  
  
• Limit to two the number of pots recreational potters can use on their property. Some counties now specify four.

Whew, that’s a big order that would affect just about all crabbers. Tidewater fisheries administrator Pete Jensen said once the ramifications were evaluated, support began to materialize. “It’s generally conceded that something has to be done.”

It’s more down the road that the proposals are directed, said Jensen. Crabs already are the most important and profitable Bay resource, and possibly the most single popular catch. He figures one in seven Marylanders go crabbing.

Jensen is concerned about the ongoing rapid expansion of not just catching pressure but also crabbing business. Consumer demand for soft crabs has spread world-wide in recent years, it’s a profitable business, which prompts fears of overfishing to satisfy increasing commercial crab shedding operations.

Worse still is the increasing number of crab pots worked in the Bay. As finfish and other shellfish catches plummet, watermen turn to the one resource that so far has avoided the drastic declines—averaging about 47 million pounds for commercial crabbers annually until last year’s catch of 30 million, second lowest on record.

Where 300 pots were sufficient for many potters several years ago, many use more.

Danny Beck, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, admits putting out 1,200 to 1,600 pots in the upper bay. Those of us who cruise that area need not be reminded. Boating has become an obstacle course; one wonders how a crab can avoid being caught.

But Beck is a typical waterman trying to stay in business. He’s also effective and outspoken. During a rockfish hearing nine years ago, he mooned a DNR panel in disgust to cap an impassionate plea for less restrictions. He will be a big thorn in the Schaefer program, and Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, will be watched closely.

Simns admits something has to be done, but is skeptical about the 300-pot and time limits. Capt. Buddy Harrison, who combines a charterboat fleet, country inn and oyster business at Tilghman Island and has a close relationship with the governor, complained that cutbacks on crabs mean cutbacks also for both the life style and livelihood of watermen. Schaefer will certainly hear his arguments.

Charlie Schnaitman, who operates Wye Landing on Wye River, is ready to fight sports licensing; he already has started his letter-writing campaign. His is the state’s largest facility catering to sports crabbers, and he fears a $7 license is too much to ask of one who crabs once or twice a year.

“I've got 100 boat rentals, and most of them will stay at the pier if it costs that much,” griped Schnaitman who concedes something must be done. “But they’re going overboard.”

Sports crabber Peter Ramscutt stopped me in Baltimore to complain about the license. “It’s just adding more money to Schaefer’s pockets,” he said. “We pay for boats and fishing licenses and they [the politicians] find a way to raid our funds. I’m fighting this until I am assured the funds will help crabs.”

William C. Baker, president of Chesapeake Bay Foundation, lauded the plan as very bold and needed. He expressed hopes that the usual foot-dragging Virginia will follow suit. The “foot-dragging” I added because Virginia’s record is wait to the last minute, then do as little as possible.

Virginia is just now looking at the issue. Marylanders have long complained of Virginia’s crab-dredging, which primarily affects female crabs wintering there. In the past, we’ve been told those catches don’t affect our populations and spawning success much because females spawn only once in a lifetime.

However, Jensen said it is not improbable that many “pregnant” crabs that have not completed their mission are dredged in Virginia. He looks for Virginia to make a move soon as part of a previous management agreement with Maryland.

Most of the Schaefer plan involves General Assembly action, an ominous sign in view of that body’s traditional reluctance to impose restrictions on watermen. The environment usually loses in trade-offs with legislators from other districts.

Possible this year by DNR administrative action alone are crabbing hour restrictions.

Get ready for a fight; it’s coming. Regrettably, it will probably come down to that old issue of a choice between conservation and the economy. Those involved should heed the advice of the late Adlai Stevenson who in so many words cautioned us more than 40 years ago that repairing a troubled economy could be easier than a troubled natural resource.

Enough said.

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