If you have a giant hunger, order the Red Roost crab pot, which comes with six steamed crabs plus fried chicken and steamed clams, shrimp, mussels, and corn-guaranteed to result in a food coma. Inside, you’ll be rewarded by the bounty of seafood options, including steamed crabs, peel-and-eat shrimp, and oysters served on the half shell. The trip there is half the fun, as the scenic spot backs up to the Ellis Bay Wildlife Management Area, a great spot for sighting egrets, herons and other migratory birds. To get here, you’ll need to drive along a winding road that leads you into the Wicomico County marshlands. ![]() Now it’s known as one of the best seafood and crab houses on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The Red Roost looks like a chicken house, and rightly so it was a chicken farm until the 1960s when a series of high-tide floods overtook the land. See a three-dimensional model of the Bay's "dead zone," areas of low oxygen.The Red Roost Crabhouse & Restaurant Quantico The runoff of fertilizer and animal waste can rob the Chesapeake Bay of oxygen that blue crabs need - and so can sewage from small towns, suburbs and cities. The Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey, conducted annually by the states of Maryland and Virginia, estimates numbers of crabs in the Bay, including juveniles and spawning females. Read more about the project in “The Value of Crabbing,” an article in Chesapeake Quarterly. Another was to help assure the sustainability of a fishery on which working watermen depend for their livelihoods. The goal was to help sustain the blue crab’s fragile recovery in the Bay by reducing future potential fishing pressure. Aided by our studies of prevailing market license prices, the state Department of Natural Resources purchased hundreds of licenses from Marylanders who had not fished for crabs in years. License buy back: Economists with Maryland Sea Grant Extension provided analysis that helped to shape a state project to buy back unused commercial crabbing licenses.Eugene Cronin, this volume provides a comprehensive survey of blue crab biology, ecology, and history. The Blue Crab: Callinectes Sapidus, an 800-page textbook for sale through our Bookstore. Edited by marine biologists Victor Kennedy and L.Tracking the Blue Crab Comeback, an issue of Chesapeake Quarterly, Maryland Sea Grant’s magazine: Learn about the decline and recent recovery of blue crabs in the Bay.To learn more about the blue crab fishery and its management, check out these Maryland Sea Grant resources: Recommendations made by this committee helped to inform new fisheries rules in both states - rules that in turn have been credited with restoring blue crab numbers across the Chesapeake. Maryland Sea Grant was integral in organizing and advising the Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee (BBCAC), a partnership between Maryland and Virginia. Our goal is to help conserve the Bay’s crabs while supporting the livelihoods of Maryland watermen. Maryland Sea Grant supports research that informs the management of the blue crab fishery. But the number shrank significantly to only about 300 million crabs in 2013 and remained at that level in 2014. Thanks in part to new harvest limits established in 2008 for female crabs, overall population numbers have improved in some years since, soaring to an estimated 765 million crabs in 2012. Populations dropped dangerously in the mid-2000s. ![]() Reasons include the natural life cycle of crabs, harvest levels, and cycles in climate patterns that affect crab reproduction. ![]() The population of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay has fluctuated significantly during the past decade. “Dead zones” of low- to no-oxygen near the bottom of the Bay can suffocate crabs as they move up the estuary during the summer.Shoreline development and the disappearance of underwater grasses across much of the Bay have led to the loss of habitats for juvenile crabs.Fishing pressures have driven down the number of crabs in the Chesapeake Bay at various times throughout Maryland’s history. ![]() While this fishery has been the state’s largest and most profitable for years, populations of blue crab ( Callinectes sapidus) face a number of challenges today. Generations of Marylanders have loved their crab.ĭespite this long-running love affair, or maybe because of it, the blue crab fishery in Maryland has faced numerous ups and downs throughout its history. There’s nothing like a bushel of blue crabs steamed with Old Bay seasoning or picked and lightly grilled in a crab cake.
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