The Richmond Times Dispatch
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Panel to study crab-limit swap / Conservationists still expecting U.S. moratorium

BY LAWRENCE LATANÉ III
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 22, 2000

ALEXANDRIA -- Both sides in a conservation battle over horseshoe crabs and shorebirds claimed the advantage yesterday after Virginia won a study that it hopes will forestall a federal closure of its horseshoe crab fishery.

"This should stop the moratorium," state Commissioner of Fisheries Bill Pruitt said after a coastal fishing authority approved a study of a Virginia proposal to allow states to transfer their horseshoe crab harvest quotas among themselves.

But conservationists who have pushed for months to ease fishing pressure on the primitive species remained confident that Virginia gained nothing that will prevent a scheduled mid-September shutdown of its horseshoe crab season.

"It doesn't change the fact that Virginia is out of compliance [with horseshoe conservation efforts], and that finding requires the moratorium be imposed," said Kay Slaughter of the Charlottesville-based Southern Environmental Law Center.

In the most unusual fishing controversy on the Atlantic seaboard, Virginia has aligned itself against every other state on the coast in refusing to accept limits in its annual horseshoe crab harvest. Advocates say the cuts are needed for the welfare of migratory shorebirds that depend on the crabs' eggs to fuel their annual flight to breeding grounds in Arctic Canada.

In June, the Atlantic States Marine Resources Commission, which approved Virginia's request yesterday, voted 14-1 against the state in declaring it out of compliance with coastwide conservation efforts. That set into motion a federal process to close state waters and possibly even its ports to the catching and landing of horseshoe crabs.

Pruitt has said that if federal authorities follow through, the moratorium will cripple Virginia conch fishermen, who require horseshoe crabs for bait and generate about $40 million a year for the state's economy.

Virginia has fought the imposition of limits on horseshoe crabs for months. The Atlantic marine commission wants the state to accept a catch quota of 152,495 crabs. Virginia is resisting because its fishing industry says it typically uses about 1.4 million crabs a year.

Virginia had set a 710,000-crab landing limit for this year with the expectation that watermen would meet the balance of their bait needs from out-of-state purchases.

But last month, it cut that quota in half to 355,000 crabs, and it required conch fishermen to use protective bait bags found to double the usefulness of a horseshoe crab bait.

Yesterday, Pruitt and Jack Travelstead, the fisheries director for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, argued that the coastal commission should give states the flexibility to transfer unused quotas among themselves as long as the coastwide catch quota of 2.2 million crabs is not exceeded.

If that were allowed, Virginia might be able to strike deals with other states for a share of their quotas, Travelstead said.

"It would cause absolutely no harm to the horseshoe crab resource and would mitigate the impact [of the conservation plan] on Virginia fishermen," Travelstead said.

The coastal commission voted 10-3, with two states abstaining, to authorize a committee to review what impact quota trading might have on crab stocks and shorebirds. Disputed surveys suggest that both the numbers of horseshoe crabs and some shorebirds are declining in Delaware Bay, where most of the mid-Atlantic crabs come ashore each May to spawn.

Rhode Island representative David Borden urged both sides in the dispute not to interpret yesterday's vote as a change in the commission's attitude towards Virginia. The vote merely launches a technical review of quota trading, he said.

Paul Perra of the National Marine Fisheries Service, who represents the Commerce Department on the coastal commission, said the federal government is proceeding apace with the moratorium.

"What we're doing now is deciding on the timing," he said, predicting that the federal government will shut down horseshoe crab fishing in Virginia in mid-September.