Maryland Sea Grant: Blue Crab Workshop

Preface

For more than a century, research by numerous scientists on the complex life history and biology of Callinectes sapidus has contributed significantly to our understanding of the organism throughout its range on the Atlantic seaboard. While the earliest account of blue crab life history dates back to John Hopkins scientist William K. Brooks (Brooks 1882), other Maryland researchers such as R.V. Truitt (1939) and Eugene Cronin (1947; Pyle and Cronin 1950) at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory began making seminal contributions to our understanding early on.

Over the last 25 years, research has intensified on many aspects of blue crab life history, physiology, ecology and recruitment. Olmi and Orth (1995), for example, provide a valuable historical context that highlights the long-term commitment of the research community to furthering our knowledge about blue crab recruitment throughout its range on the Atlantic seaboard. Most recently, in March 2000, a Blue Crab Symposium held at the Benthic Ecology Meeting in Wilmington, North Carolina, brought together researchers on a broad spectrum of blue crab issues, among them, reproduction and embryonic development, diseases and defense responses, planktonic, juvenile and adult ecology, and population dynamics.

In these last several years, research findings and monitoring indicators, both of which have contributed to blue crab management strategies in Chesapeake Bay, have been signaling that blue crabs are near the lowest point measured since fisheries-independent surveys began. This led the states of Maryland and Virginia to allocate $300,000 for a comprehensive analysis of the blue crab and its management in the Bay. Undertaken by the Chesapeake Bay Commission's Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee. This investigation included researchers, resource managers, legislators, seafood processors and watermen. After an intensive two years of research, analysis and public hearings, the Bi-state Committee reached a consensus that blue crab stocks in the Bay were well below the long-term average and recommended an action agenda for modifying the management of the blue crab resource. In its conclusions, the Committee noted that management is not fixed, that it is "a work in progress" and that there are numerous areas where information and scientific knowledge "remain incomplete at best."

It is for this reason that Maryland Sea Grant convened a meeting of scientists in the state to help provide input on priority areas of research that could better contribute to more effective management of the blue crab resource in Chesapeake Bay. The participants were asked to draw on current scientific knowledge about the blue crab (for example, from the Blue Crab Symposium) to address specific issues of blue crab ecology, reproductive biology, population dynamics, habitat, and stock enhancement as a management tool. The scientists identified important short and long-term research priorities that could better inform sustainable management of the Bay blue crab; these priority needs cover (1) reproductive biology, (2) physiology, molecular biology and behavior, (3) habitat and (4) anthropogenic influences. This brief report summarizes their recommendations, which should be of aid in determining statewide goals for research over the coming years.