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Blue crab abundance in the Chesapeake Bay this year was at its second-lowest level since winter dredge surveys began in 1990, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
But the department is holding strong on the current harvest regulations, said Mandy Bromilow, blue crab program manager at the department.
“We’re still OK,” Bromilow said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s not something where we’re super concerned.”
That’s partly because the low levels did not fall below a key threshold of 72.5 million spawning-age female crabs. At 108 million, this year’s figure was below the department’s target of 196 million, but it didn’t hit rock bottom.
Scientists at DNR say that a harsh winter may be to blame, with cold snaps capable of killing off crabs bedding down for the season. The numbers of male, female and juvenile crabs all declined in 2025’s survey, conducted from December through March. The total figure was 238 million crabs — compared to 317 million crabs the year before.
But the department is also awaiting the results from a fuller assessment of the blue crab stock, due out next spring, that promises to reshape the way the beloved crustacean is managed throughout the Chesapeake. It will be the first major stock assessment for the species since 2011.
The assessment doesn’t involve any additional surveys out on the water, but rather an in-depth review of existing data, with the goal of determining not only the overall health of the population, but the reasons for its fluctuations.
Scientists already know that the blue crabs are highly sensitive to factors like water temperature, and they only live for a few years, so the population can experience “boom and bust” cycles. But lately, the “busts” seem to keep coming, with six straight years of a below-average population of juvenile crabs. The lowest total population recorded by the survey since 1990 was just a few years ago, in 2022.
“Layered on top of those natural annual fluctuations, there are some additional somewhat unclear or mysterious factors that many hypothesize are influencing the blue crab population,” said Allison Colden, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Could it be the high population of invasive — and hungry — blue catfish gobbling up young crabs? Could it be water pollution depressing the growth of underwater grasses — a critical shelter protecting crabs from predators? Or might it be a question of climate change harming blue crabs by altering their ecosystem?
“We know the temperatures are increasing. We know that the timing of different algae blooms and other important cycles within the Chesapeake Bay is changing,” Colden said. “The relative impact of each one of those factors is something we hope that Maryland and Virginia will be able to investigate and address through the upcoming stock assessment.”
Bromilow noted that Maryland has taken action in response to the declining trend. For example, in 2022, when the population reached its nadir, the department set the first-ever bushel limits for male crabs, shifting a management strategy that had focused on females. The department has kept the limits in place since then. But the population hasn’t responded accordingly. The number of adult male crabs fell from 46 million in 2024 to 26 million in 2025 — a record low.
“The changes that we’re making — we’re not really seeing a response, and so it seems likely that there’s something else going on, like the environmental factors,” Bromilow said.
The stock assessment will bring in scientific literature, computer modeling, and years worth of winter dredge data, and it could yield a changed paradigm for blue crab management in the bay, including for male crabs, Bromilow said. The assessment is produced by scientists from institutions such as the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, as well as natural resources departments such as Maryland’s.
“The threshold or target could change, or we could learn that maybe males are more important than we thought previously, and there needs to be maybe a male reference point,” Bromilow said. “But we don’t know that just yet.”
In a news release, the Bay Foundation called the 2025 numbers “distressing” and called for Maryland to maintain bushel limits for male crabs, and increase protection for female crabs, “including reducing the importation of egg bearing ‘sponge’ crabs from Virginia.”
“Reducing harvest overall — and managing conservatively until we have the stock assessment — is probably a good idea, considering the trends we’ve been seeing over the past five to six years,” Colden said.
The Bay Foundation is calling on Virginia to decrease its harvest, and “consider additional protections for males,” because of the historically low density this year, which fell below 2022’s figure of 26 million. The foundation also renewed its calls for the federal government to maintain funding for clean water initiatives at agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, citing their benefits for blue crabs.
Rob Newberry, a waterman and chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, said Thursday that he wasn’t surprised by the bad results this year, given the tough winter, with temperatures that quickly plummeted and stayed cold, shocking crabs buried in the mud.
All the sudden the water [temperature] drops. Well, they’re dormant, and they can’t bury any deeper,” Newberry said. “They get clobbered.”
Brian Nesspor, a Rock Hall crabber known by the nickname “Beefalo” or “Beef,” said he’s expecting an “average” year for the blue crab harvest. He’s optimistic about the number of young crabs, in part because he’s heard good news from fellow watermen who target clams on the bay bottom.
They’ve seen more little crabs on their conveyor belts than crabbers see in their crab pots, which have a bigger mesh that allows small crabs to escape, Nesspor said.
“The report has been from them that it’s a very good banner crop of small crabs,” Nesspor, who is a member of Maryland’s Tidal Fisheries Advisory Commission.
Nesspor has doubts about the baywide winter dredge survey. He argues that the sites selected for the survey each year may fail to capture the changing behavior of wintering blue crabs.
Each year, the surveyors randomly select 1,500 sites in the bay with water deeper than 5 feet for the survey, which DNR conducts alongside the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, according to its website. Nesspor has suggested that the department add one extra site per county suggested by watermen, based on the conditions they observe in the estuary. But he said he has been turned down.
“The crabs are bedding farther north. They’re in shallower water,” Nesspor said. “Everything is changing in the bay. Mother Nature is way ahead of us.”
Newberry shares the skepticism about the methodology.
“It’s not like counting sheep in a field,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a difficult problem here: They’re underwater, and you’re not.”
