Chesapeake Bay News

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission will buy back 359 commercial crab licenses, in a historic action to take more than 75,000 crab pots off the water as part of a multi-year species rebuilding effort.

The licenses will be retired permanently. The removal of 75,441 licensed crab pots represents an almost 20 percent reduction in the number of pots permitted for use in Virginia waters.

“This far surpassed our expectations,’’ said VMRC Commissioner Steven G. Bowman. “This is a great long-term benefit for this environmentally and economically important species.”

The license buyback program closed on Nov. 1. A total of 664 bids were received, in the first ever so-called reverse auction in which crabbers submitted non-negotiable bids and gave the lowest offer they would accept for the purchase of their licenses.

The bids were analyzed and matched to the harvest histories of each bidder. Purchase priority was given for the licenses used most often, and number of pots permitted for each license, in order to reduce the fishing effort in the most cost-efficient manner.

Acceptance letters to the holders of the 359 licenses accepted for the buyback were mailed on Nov. 20. Checks will be written within the next few weeks.

Payments will be made from a pool of $6.7 million appropriated by the federal government as part of a blue crab disaster designation by the National Marine Fisheries Service last year. The VMRC’s license buyback program was enthusiastically approved by NMFS.

License buyback offers were accepted from 59 full-time commercial crabbers, 131 part-time crabbers and 169 crabbers who had not used their licenses since 2004 and were put on a waiting list until the crab population rebounds and stabilizes at high levels for three consecutive years.

Those full-time crabbers held licenses that permitted the use of 14,299 crab pots; 27,733 pots for part-timers; and 33,409 for those on the waiting list.

“It is especially important to ensure the long-term viability of our rebuilding efforts to retire licenses held by those on the waiting list. When the overall crab population returns to abundance, those licenses could significantly undermine the stability of the stock if they were put back in use,’’ said VMRC Fisheries Chief Jack Travelstead. “This is money well spent for the future of this fishery.”

Removing 75,441 crab pots from circulation is a reduction of 18 percent of the 423,000 crab pots that had been licensed for use in Virginia waters.

Retiring 359 crab licenses from the books will leave 1,649 licenses in circulation, including 314 licenses that cannot currently be used because they are on a waiting list. The number of crab licenses issued was capped in 1998.

The bids received varied widely. Full-time crabber bids ranged from $5,000 to $600,000; part-timer bids ranged from $500 to $634,000; and bids from those on the waiting list ranged from $500 to $300,000.

The accepted bids ranged from $500 to $175,000.

Last year, the VMRC and Maryland officials confronted a dangerously low crab population and enacted a bay-wide 34 percent harvest reduction strategy in an effort to rebuild a stock in danger of crashing in the event of a single poor year of reproduction.

At that point, the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab population had plummeted 70 percent since 1993.

The VMRC banned the winter dredging of crabs last year and this year, shortened the season for harvest of female crabs, required larger escape rings on crab pots, and enacted a waiting list for inactive licenses.

Within a year, the bay-wide adult crab population doubled, according to a scientific crab population survey that has proven over decades to be highly accurate. Results of this winter’s survey will guide the VMRC in future crab management decisions.

“We are stewards of our marine resources and we take our jobs seriously,” said Bowman. “We will do what is necessary.”

The ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved Addendum IV to Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden. Addendum IV extends the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery harvest cap, established through Addendum III, for an additional three years (2011 – 2013). Under the Addendum, the Board will annually review measures to determine if they are appropriate given the most recent information available about the stock and fishery. At any future meeting, the Board can initiate development of additional or alternative management measures.

The Board’s action was requested by the Commonwealth of Virginia in order to accommodate its legislative process as well as ensure that the current management program is extended while menhaden research efforts continue. Virginia’s legislature, which convenes in January each year, is responsible for regulating the menhaden reduction fishery in state waters. With Addendum IV in place this year, Virginia state administrators can work with the legislature in early 2010 to amend Virginia law to extend the harvest cap without the current cap expiring.

Addendum III established the current annual cap of 109,020 metric tons on reduction fishery harvests in Chesapeake Bay as a precautionary measure while research was conducted to address the question of menhaden abundance in the Bay. The cap was first instituted in 2006 to extend through 2010. With adoption of Addendum IV that cap will be extended through 2013 with the following provisions.  Harvest for reduction purposes is prohibited in Chesapeake Bay when 100% of the cap is landed. Over-harvest in any given year will be deducted from the next year’s quota. Under-harvest in one year will be credited only to the following year’s cap, not to exceed 122,740 metric tons. Since 2006, reduction landings of menhaden from Chesapeake Bay have not exceeded the cap of 109,020 metric tons.

A copy of Addendum IV will be available via the Commission’s website at www.asmfc.org under Breaking News by November 13, 2009.  For more information, please contact Braddock Spear, Senior FMP Coordinator for Policy, at (202) 289-6400 or bspear@asmfc.org.

source: ASMFC press release

As of October 29, 2009, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has purchased and permanently retired more than 530 Limited Crab Catcher (LCC) commercial crabbing licenses through its LCC buy-back program.   To further reduce latent effort (fishing effort that is not currently deployed) the agency is also proposing a change in regulations governing the LCC License.

“With the purchase of more than 530 licenses, the buy-back program is certainly meeting our expectations,” said DNR secretary John Griffin. “However, while retiring these unused licenses is an important component of our efforts to rebuild the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab population, additional actions are needed to ensure a sustainable fishery.”

The license program, which was launched in July, works on a first-come, first-served basis. With $3 million in Federal disaster funding dedicated to the program, the agency will continue to pay $2,260 per license until the budget is exhausted, or until it has purchased 1,327 — more than one-third — of the 3,676 existing LCC licenses.

“Buying back these licenses is just one step we’re taking to improve the management of the blue crab fishery,” said Fisheries Service Director Tom O’Connell. “We are also looking at ways to improve harvest reporting and working closely with Natural Resources Police to improve enforcement. These actions, along with the Bay wide reduction in female harvest will help maintain a healthy blue crab population in the Chesapeake.”

DNR is proposing new regulations that will require holders of inactive LCC licenses to choose between two options if they do not want to sell back their licenses.  DNR developed these options based on extensive public input on the issue of unused commercial crabbing licenses.

1. An inactive licensee can declare the license frozen until the crab population reaches a target abundance, at which time the Department will develop a process for re-entry into the fishery. These licenses will not be permanently retired, and can be transferred during the time it is temporarily frozen.  There will be no annual renewal fee for these licenses during the temporary freeze.

2. An inactive licensee can declare the LCC license a “male only” license, allowing only the harvest of male crabs.  The licensee will be able to transfer the license only to a family member or leave it to a beneficiary, and the male only license will not revert back to a full license regardless of the abundance of the crab population.

Once a license is declared ‘frozen’ or ‘male only’ the status of the license cannot be changed, even through the transfer process.   Currently an LCC holder may use up to 50 crab pots, trotlines, nets, dip nets, traps, pounds and scrapes to harvest crabs for sale.

Over the past year, Maryland was awarded $15 million in Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funds from NOAA‘s National Marine Fisheries Service, in response to a request from Governors O’Malley and Kaine, and advocacy by the Maryland Congressional Delegation under the leadership of Senator Barbara Mikulski.

Maryland’s Federal Blue Crab Fisheries Disaster Funding is being directed toward work for watermen, addressing latent effort, a quality crab meat assurance program, economic diversification into aquaculture, packaging equipment upgrades for processors, a seafood marketing program for blue crabs and enhanced harvest reporting and enforcement of crabbing restrictions.

Over the past two years, Governor Martin O’Malley worked with Maryland legislators to identify $6 million to fund a work program through which more than 500 watermen have conducted oyster bar rehabilitation activities.

For more information on the buy back program, please visit:  http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/crab/crabindex.html

For more information on the proposed regulation, please visit:

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/regulations/proposedregulations.html

source: MD DNR press release

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has announced that it is revising the Commercial Limited Crab Catcher (LCC) License Buy-Back Program. The agency began the voluntary Buy-Back program in July in an effort to reduce the amount of latent (inactive) effort in Maryland’s commercial blue crab fishery.

The large amount of potential crabbing effort in the Maryland fishery poses a long-term biological and economic threat to the crab population, as an unknown number of inactive licenses may re-enter the fishery in any year. On July 8 the Department sent all (3,676) latent and active LCC license holders a letter offering to permanently buy back licenses through a process called a reverse auction. The reverse auction offered individuals an opportunity to submit a bid to the Department for the amount of money for which they would be willing to permanently relinquish their license.

DNR chose to use a reverse auction approach to help set a fair value for an LCC license. The goal of the Buy-Back Program is to buy and permanently retire 2,000 LCC licenses. The deadline to participate in the initial offer was July 31.

A total of 494 LCC-holders submitted bids to the Department by the deadline. While participation in the auction was less than the Department had hoped, the bids submitted did provide important data to allow DNR to determine a fair value for an LCC license. Based on the limited participation in the first wave, and the Department’s desire to acquire additional LCC licenses in the future, DNR is revising and extending its program offer.

All initial bids will be formally declined. Instead, the Department will immediately offer a fixed price of $2,260 to all LCC holders who may wish to sell their license. DNR used the 494 bids received through the reverse auction to determine a fixed, fair value for an LCC license.

“By establishing a fixed sales price for an LCC license we can now eliminate uncertainty for the license holder,” said DNR Secretary John Griffin. “In addition, we plan to extend this offer to LCC license holders until the funding for this project is exhausted. We feel that this course of action will ultimately get us closer to achieving our goal.”

Each LCC license holder that submitted a bid in July will be receiving a letter from DNR by August 21 with the fair value counteroffer of $2,260, regardless of the value of their original offer. This letter will contain the instructions necessary for a licensee to accept this counteroffer and surrender his/her license to the Department.

In the next few weeks, all additional LCC-holders who did not participate in the reverse auction will receive a similar letter, providing them another opportunity to accept the counter offer.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), through Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funds, is providing funding for the LCC Buy-Back Program. The funding was secured under the leadership of Governor Martin O’Malley, Senator Barbara Mikulski and the Maryland Congressional Delegation in 2008.

While the overall crab population in the Chesapeake Bay rebounded significantly last year, the number of juvenile crabs remained well below the historical average, according to a report published by the NOAA-chaired Fisheries Steering Committee.

“New regulations implemented by the various bay jurisdictions in 2008 seem to be working,” said Peyton Robertson, director of the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office. “The continued improvements in science and their application to management appear to be resulting in a
positive direction for the blue crab in the Chesapeake.”

The 2009 Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Advisory Report, developed by the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee, is based primarily on data collected in the 2008-09 bay-wide winter dredge survey, the most comprehensive and statistically robust annual blue crab survey
conducted in the bay.

The data shows:

Abundance of blue crabs over the age of one was 223 million, a 70 percent increase from the 2007-08 survey numbers. This was primarily due to an increase in abundance of spawning-age females. Since the winter dredge survey began in 1990, the average blue crab population in the bay has been 186 million.

Bay-wide, numbers of juvenile crabs entering the population did not increase appreciably. There were an estimated 179 million juvenile crabs in the bay—well below the survey’s long-term average of 258 million.

The estimated 2008 harvest of blue crabs from the bay and tributaries was 48.6 million pounds—11 percent higher than the record-low 43.5 million pounds in 2007, but well below the long-term average of 74 million pounds.

Based on these statistics, an estimated 48 percent of crabs were harvested from the bay by commercial and recreational fishers in 2008. That is below the overfishing threshold of 53 percent, but slightly above the target of 46 percent.

“While it is heartening to see numbers rebound, resource managers need to maintain conservation measures until their full effects are known,” Robertson said. “We won’t know the full effectiveness of the new regulations implemented in 2008 until we study results from the next two winter dredge surveys.”

The Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee includes fisheries scientists from the University of Maryland, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the states of Maryland and Virginia. The Fisheries Steering Committee works with the various bay management jurisdictions and is a forum where fisheries management agencies communicate and coordinate decisions across management boundaries.

In an effort toward effective management of Maryland’s blue crab population, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is offering to permanently buy back 3,676 commercial limited crab catcher (LCC) licenses. DNR is implementing this buy-back program in response to public feedback offering solutions for reducing the number of inactive crabbing licenses. The agency mailed letters to all current LCC license holders informing them of this voluntary program, which will use Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funds to reduce latent effort in Maryland’s commercial blue crab fishery. Latent effort is defined as fishing effort that is not currently deployed in the fishery.

To sustainably manage the blue crab fishery, the Bay-wide targeted annual blue crab harvest is limited to removal of 46 percent of the population. Last year, in a coordinated strategy to limit the 2008 harvest to the 46 percent target and to begin rebuilding the depleted crab population, Maryland, Virginia and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission adopted measures to reduce the harvest of the spawning stock of female blue crabs by 34 percent. The most recent winter dredge survey results noted a substantial increase in the adult population over 2008, indicating new management measures are working.

Inactive licenses account for approximately one-third of LCC license holders, making it difficult to adopt management strategies that will ensure the harvest target is met, while allowing full-time active crabbers to make an adequate wage. Having such a large number of people who may or may not crab in any given year poses a long-term biological and economic threat to a rebuilding stock.

“Our concern is if even a fraction of these individuals decide to re-enter the fishery in a given year, our regulations will not be sufficient to maintain the harvest target,” said DNR Secretary John Griffin. “The license buy-back program is our first step to reduce the amount of latent effort in Maryland’s commercial blue crab fishery.”

To address this problem, DNR is offering a commercial limited buy-back program through a reverse auction. The process requires individuals to submit bids to the Department for the amount of money they determine their license to be worth. If an individual chooses to sell his or her license and DNR accepts the bid, the license will be permanently retired. DNR held four open houses in April – targeting commercial crabbers and key legislators — to educate the public on the problem of latent effort and to obtain public input on possible solutions.

The deadline for submitting bids to DNR is July 31, 2009. After receiving all bids, DNR will use the range of bids received to calculate the maximum acceptable bid. Bids under that amount will be accepted from lowest to highest, until the available budget is exhausted. Individuals will be notified of acceptance or rejection of their bid by August 15, 2009, and accepted bidders will receive their payments in early September, 2009.

If inactive license holders choose not to submit a bid, or if DNR does not accept the auction bid, the license will be subject to new regulations that will be proposed in fall 2009. If approved, these regulations will require inactive LCC license holders to choose among several options. These may include: access to a limited, male-only harvest, with the licensing becoming non-transferable; or a temporary freeze of the license until the blue crab population has maintained target abundance, as determined by the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee. An inactive license holder is defined as an individual who has not reported any harvest between April 1, 2004 and December 15, 2008. The deadline to return 2008 reports to the Department was January 2, 2009. Reports received by the Department after January 31, 2009 will not be counted toward an individual’s harvest history.

“Our counterparts in Virginia are also pursuing a license buy-back program this summer using Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funds, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission is discussing this as well,” said Fisheries Director Tom O’Connell. “Working in close coordination with them, we can continue to do our job of maintaining the Bay’s iconic blue crab fishery so that it will prosper for many generations to come.”

Last year, Maryland and Virginia were each awarded $10 million in Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funds from NOAA‘s National Marine Fisheries Service, in response to a request from Governors O’Malley and Kaine, and advocacy by the Maryland Congressional Delegation under the leadership of Senator Barbara Mikulski. In June, Maryland applied for an additional $5 million in Federal Blue Crab Disaster Funding that became available in May.

Maryland’s Federal Blue Crab Fisheries Disaster Funding is being directed toward work for watermen, addressing latent effort, a quality crab meat assurance program, economic diversification into aquaculture, packaging equipment upgrades for processors, a seafood marketing program for blue crabs and enhanced harvest reporting and enforcement of crabbing restrictions.

In 2008, Governor Martin O’Malley worked with Maryland legislators to identify $3 million to fund a work program through which more than 500 watermen have conducted oyster bar rehabilitation activities. An additional $3 million is included in the State’s FY ’10 budget to continue this important work.

Detailed summaries of open house material, summaries of public comment received and LCC buy back information are available at: www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/crab/crabindex.html

Governor Martin O’Malley has signed three new bills into law which will impose more serious penalties for fishing law violations in Maryland.

“This legislation, like so many other efforts we are working on in Maryland, reflects our steadfast resolve to protect and maintain our State’s vast and diverse fishery population,” said Governor O’Malley. “Poaching and other illegal fishing activity amounts to stealing the valuable natural resources that are critical to maintaining healthy rivers and bays. This legislation establishes much needed, more timely and consequential penalties that are necessary to prevent theft from and harm to the resources we hold in the public trust.”

House Bill 1355 will allow DNR to apply a reasonable commercial license suspension or revocation when someone is convicted of violating a commercial fishing law. Prior to enactment of this legislation, DNR could not suspend a commercial fishing license unless an individual incurred multiple convictions over two to five years. The bill does away with the need to first consider the frequency of convictions, as well as the need to first consider multiple convictions before a suspension or revocation can take place. This will provide a more serious consequence for fishing law violators, whose current penalty is generally a minimal fine, which in most cases is not a sufficient deterrent.

“As legislators, we continually hear about the need to reduce the decimation of the Bay,” said Delegate Steve Lafferty, who sponsored House Bill 1355. “This is an important step to reducing the illegal takings that are reducing our legal fisheries. I am more than pleased to work with the Department to address this problem.”

House Bill 1419 was borne from recommendations of the Task Force on Fisheries Management. The bill will increase the maximum allowable fine upon conviction from $500 to $1,000 for a first offense and from $1,000 to $2,000 for a second or subsequent violation of fisheries law. These fines have not been increased since their adoption in 1973. The bill also allows the DNR to impose restitution or other monetary penalties on a person convicted of violating certain fisheries laws and authorizes the DNR to establish a list of monetary and ecological values for aquatic species. Restitution paid will be used for replacement, habitat management, or enforcement programs for fish or protected species.

“Our task force knows that good fisheries management requires effective enforcement,” said Tom Lewis, Chairman of the Task Force on Fisheries Management. “We are pleased with DNR’s success in following through with our recommendations for additional legislation. These bills will help strengthen and rationalize the enforcement tools available for fisheries violations.”

Senate Bill 164 was also developed from recommendations of the Task Force on Fisheries Management. This legislation gives DNR consistent authority to suspend recreational fishing privileges across both tidal and non-tidal waters. A clearer, more consistent process will promote compliance with fishing regulations, give DNR greater enforcement tools and send a clear message to the public about the process of fishing license suspension.

“Violating the law is a crime and should be treated as such, whether the theft is bushels of oysters or blue crabs or a television or stereo,” said DNR Secretary John Griffin. “The enactment of these bills provides an additional measure of protection to our aquatic resources by discouraging violators who would intentionally abuse them.”

Governor O’Malley established the 17-member Task Force on Fisheries Management, comprised of scientists, recreational anglers, watermen, charter boat captains and conservationists, in November 2007. The Fisheries Management Reform Act (Senate Bill 1012) charged the Task Force with developing new strategies to better manage Maryland’s valuable fishery resources and develop recommendations for methods to improve, modernize, and streamline fishery management.

On May 7, 2009, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a new Aquaculture Shellfish Leasing bill (Senate Bill 271/House Bill 312) that revamps leasing laws to make it easier for watermen and others to grow shellfish in the Bay. The bill, developed out of recommendations from the Oyster Advisory Commission, is another one of Governor O’Malley’s Smart, Green and Growing initiatives from the 2009 Legislative Assembly.

“Expanding opportunities for shellfish aquaculture in Maryland waters is vital to the health and economic prosperity of the Chesapeake and coastal bays,” said Governor O’Malley. “These changes will not only help restore important aquatic populations – like our native oyster – but also create jobs for Maryland’s working families.”

The new law will create aquaculture enterprise zones, and streamline the permit process in the Bay. It will provide incentives to spur private investment in leasing operations, and encourage commercial fishery experts to transition into aquaculture.

“Restoring our oyster population is central to healing the Chesapeake Bay and creating a sustainable fishing industry,” said Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin. “Under Governor O’Malley’s leadership this is a major step for the health of the Bay and those who make a living on it.”

These changes will give commercial waterman, farmers and others the opportunity to farm shellfish, helping to revitalize Maryland’s oyster industry and increase oyster and clam populations in the Chesapeake and Coastal Bays. This law will help bring Maryland in line with states such as Virginia where the hard clam aquaculture industry is a $50 million business supporting several hundred jobs in rural areas.

“Today’s bill signing signals the great potential for expanding aquafarming in a way that is smart, green and growing for our environment, our economy, and employment,” said Agriculture Secretary Earl F. Hance. “Aquaculture businesses and watermen look forward to the creation of the enterprise zones and opening of bottom leases so that they can get to work farming shellfish in the Chesapeake and Coastal Bays and bringing Maryland’s outstanding seafood products to market.”

source: MD DNR press release

On Friday, April 9, 2009, the Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) charged two Talbot County men with multiple criminal and natural resource violations as a result of an investigation of theft of fish from commercial fishing nets in the Wye River.

The investigation started March 9, when NRP received an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen reporting possible illegal fishing activity in the area of Pickering Creek Drive near Wye Island. NRP had also received a report from a commercial waterman that several of his fyke nets located in the Wye River had been cut and emptied.

A fyke net is a net used for the commercial harvest of fish. It consists of cylindrical or cone-shaped netting bags mounted on rings or other rigid structures. It has wings or leaders which guide the fish towards the entrance of the bags. Fyke nets are fixed on the bottom by anchors, ballast or stakes.

Officers responding to the Pickering Creek Drive location observed William Christopher Bradley, 21, of St. Michaels and Daniel Wesley Andrews, 30, of Wittman walking around a pickup truck that was parked at the location. The truck’s bed was full of bushel baskets containing white perch. Officers observed an all-terrain utility vehicle parked in an open barn next to the truck as they approached the two men. The bed of that vehicle was also loaded with bushel baskets of white perch. Bradley and Andrews are not commercial watermen.

During the incident, NRP seized as evidence 8,421 white perch measuring on average of four inches in length; five bushels of white perch measuring over eight inches in length; 27 sunfish; six alewife, a species of herring; four striped bass; three channel catfish; and four boxes of drift gill nets.

Bradley and Andrews were each charged by NRP with the following violations:

One count of possession of white perch measuring less than eight inches in length caught other than hook and line

One count of possession of channel catfish measuring less than 10 inches in length

One count of taking and or possessing striped bass during closed season

One count  of Failure to obtain a commercial tidal fishing license

5 counts removing fish from nets or gear of another

4 counts of failure to carry required equipment for commercial purposes as set fourth by the Federal Boat Act/Federal Boat Safety Act

One count of setting or fishing drift gill net with the a stretched mesh size less than three and one eighth inches during the period of January 1 through March 15

One count of failure to display a commercial tidal fishing license number on vessel or other equipment

5 counts of malicious destruction of property

5 counts of theft less than $500 in value

One count of theft scheme less than $500 in value

A court date of May 14,2009 has been scheduled for both men in Talbot County District Court.

Public Comment Encouraged at Three Open Houses

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is holding a series of Open Houses to address the issue of unused blue crab licenses.

In December 2008, DNR proposed regulations for the blue crab fishery that included a proposal to freeze all Limited Crab Harvester (LCC) commercial licenses that had not reported any crab harvest from 2004 to 2008. During the public discussion of this proposal, it became clear that a more extensive citizen participation process was needed. The Department withdrew the LCC license component from this year’s regulatory package.

“The Department remains committed to addressing the issue of unused crab licenses,” said Tom O’Connell, Director of DNR Fisheries Services. “We are holding this series of open houses to provide information that outlines the problems associated with unused crab licenses, provide responses to the concerns that have been raised by the public comment period and ask the public to provide constructive suggestions for short and long term solutions.”

Open houses are scheduled for:

April 16, 2009 – 1:00pm to 8:00pm

Earleigh Heights Fire Hall

161 Ritchie Highway

Severna Park, MD 21146

April 20, 2009 – 1:00pm to 8:00p

Black Diamond Lodge

310 N. Fruitland Blvd. (next to Adam’s Ribs)

Fruitland, MD 21826

April 21, 2009 – 1:00pm to 8:00p

Easton Armory

7111 Ocean Gateway

Easton, MD 21601

The Open Houses are designed as educational exhibits that the public can attend at any time during the opening hours and stay as long as they wish. DNR Staff will be onhand to discuss the potential problems associated with unused crab licenses and listen to constructive input about possible solutions. For more information, call the Blue Crab Hotline at 410-260-8286.