Survey: Baywide blue crab abundance up 46% but adult females dip 25%; CMAC to await stock assessment

The Crab Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) heard staff present the 2025 winter dredge survey and an update on the stock assessment at its May 27 meeting. Staff said a draft stock assessment passed peer review and currently includes data through 2023; an update through 2025 is expected this summer and will be used to inform future management.

Staff reported that total blue-crab abundance increased 46% from the previous year to about 349 million crabs, combining both sexes and all ages, and that juvenile abundance rose 121% to 228 million. By contrast, adult female abundance declined 25%, to 81 million — above the stated depletion threshold of 72 million but below the committee’s abundance target. Adult male abundance increased 43% to about 37 million.

"The draft assessment is solid," staff said, noting the final report has not yet been released. Staff also highlighted overwintering mortality differences between jurisdictions: adult mortality in Maryland was estimated at roughly 25–30% while Virginia’s was around 10–15%, which helps explain some sex- and area-specific trends.

Committee members pressed staff about how the results were communicated to the public. One member said the press release emphasized juvenile increases without showing year-to-year female comparisons that would make the female decline clearer. The member asked that future public materials include comparative numbers (for example, last year’s female abundance) so readers can see whether a decline was small or large.

Members discussed possible drivers of the trends, including episodic cold snaps, changes in currents that affect larval return, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) availability when recruits arrive in late summer, and predation. Staff said only about half of the variation in juvenile abundance can be explained by spawning-stock size; the other half is likely environmental. Staff also noted ongoing physical-oceanography work to relate wind and current forcing to recruitment patterns.

Staff said they will return to CMAC with the updated stock assessment this summer and begin discussing management responses, while urging caution about making major regulatory changes until the updated assessment and related analyses are available.

The meeting record shows the committee requested earlier distribution of meeting packets and press materials so members can review data before deliberations. The committee closed its survey discussion while awaiting the final stock-assessment update.