Maryland officials offered to buy thousands of licenses of part-time crabbers, but only about 500 watermen submitted proposals, said Lynn Fegley, a biologist who is the state's point person on blue crab issues.
That's far short of the 2,000 licenses state officials said they had hoped to buy through the program, which is called a "reverse auction."
The final numbers aren't in yet, as the postmark deadline was July 31, and some paperwork is still trickling in, Fegley said. But she said...
| This story has expired! You can purchase the full text in our news archives. |

If you encounter other problems, please email nlundskow@capitalgazette.com and include your name, username, and any errors or messages that are displayed. The more information you can provide, the better able we will be to assist you.
In order to post or vote on a comment, you must be signed in with a hometownannapolis account.
Take a look at a summary of Commenting Guidelines.
Report Abuse or Vote In order to allow the user community the ability to collectively rank the value of comments posted on the Capital Gazette websites we have implemented a thumbs-up/down system. All logged-in users may participate by voting up/down each comment. If others vote on your comment, your individual score will go up/down depending on the votes. Initially, everyone starts with a score of zero, and must earn credits to have significant voting weight. Individuals with higher scores will have more voting weight. 0
2
We get it Joe - 2009-08-11 12:11:05
Joe I think we all understand the plight of the watermen. You want to be able to bring in as many crabs as you can to maximize your profits... and OF COURSE we understand that. But what is going to happen if nothing is done to change the way we are harvesting crab. This icon of Maryland culture and the livelihood of all crab fishermen will continue to diminish until there is nothing left to catch. I think the crab fishermen should be just as interested, if not MORE interested in finding a way to maintain the Chesapeake Crab population.
unhide Comment hidden due to low ranking. Why is this comment hidden?
Mark M - , - Karma: Excellent
Report Abuse or Vote In order to allow the user community the ability to collectively rank the value of comments posted on the Capital Gazette websites we have implemented a thumbs-up/down system. All logged-in users may participate by voting up/down each comment. If others vote on your comment, your individual score will go up/down depending on the votes. Initially, everyone starts with a score of zero, and must earn credits to have significant voting weight. Individuals with higher scores will have more voting weight. 4
0
R. Black - 2009-08-10 23:33:33
You must be allergic to shell fish or just a moronic person who doesnt like crabs cause they dont like to get there hands dirty my stepfathers commercial watermans license is the primary source of income to my mother and 5 other siblings taking crabbing away is foolish maybe for recreational crabber but not for people who depend upon that source of income to survive just simply MORONIC think of other people and the effects things could have on marylanders before you try to use that pea size brain to comment on things you see only one-side of things on and no hangs on experience
unhide Comment hidden due to low ranking. Why is this comment hidden?
joe schmoe - , - Karma: Terrible
Report Abuse or Vote In order to allow the user community the ability to collectively rank the value of comments posted on the Capital Gazette websites we have implemented a thumbs-up/down system. All logged-in users may participate by voting up/down each comment. If others vote on your comment, your individual score will go up/down depending on the votes. Initially, everyone starts with a score of zero, and must earn credits to have significant voting weight. Individuals with higher scores will have more voting weight. 1
4
Did it the nice way... - 2009-08-10 15:42:38
Now time to just start banning crabbing outright.
When are people going to realize that we are overfishing and overcrabbing The Bay?
unhide Comment hidden due to low ranking. Why is this comment hidden?
R. Black - Churchton, MD - Karma: Neutral
If you encounter other problems, please email nlundskow@capitalgazette.com and include your name, username, and any errors or messages that are displayed. The more information you can provide, the better able we will be to assist you.