A year ago, a coalition of crabbers, environmentalists and regulators launched an experiment they hoped would get more accurate, timely and immediately useful harvest data. It’s called digital crab harvest reporting. Watermen use cell phones, iPads and such to file their reports daily, rather than paper, pencil and snail mail to file their reports monthly.
So far, regulators say, it’s been successful. They just haven’t decided whether to expand it to all the watermen out there. Richard Young, a Dundalk waterman, calls it a win-win idea. Watermen file their reports on their way back to the dock and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which regulates the fishery, has all the information it needs to track the harvest by the end of the day. “I don’t have to worry about reporting harvest anymore,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about [forgetting] what I caught, I don’t have to worry about making mistakes because I’m done. And when I get off the boat, I put the crabs away and it’s my time.”
Brenda Davis, DNR’s blue crab program manager, says the pencil and paper system is “something out of the dark ages.” Assuming the watermen all turn in their reports on time, they’re a month old by the time the department sees them; and if they don’t turn them in on time, it could be as long as a year before anyone has information. That makes it nearly impossible to effectively regulate what has always been a volatile fishery, Davis says.
With real time information in hand, regulators can make mid-season adjustments. Additionally, watermen and regulators have long questioned the accuracy of the reports. Under the digital system, DNR just might have a monitor waiting at the dock to make sure the harvest in the boat matches what the waterman reported when he started for home.
The program started with 50 watermen last year and has been expanded to 100 this year. But not everyone’s happy with it. Robert T. Brown, president of the Maryland Waterman’s Association, says many of his members are in their 60s, set in their ways and not particularly tech savvy. Worse, he says, they fear that DNR could use the reporting system to track their movements in the bay. Brown says even he was leery of that at first, but changed his mind. “If you have a cell phone and you use it just making conversation…you can be tracked, anyhow,” he reasons.
DNR’s Davis says her department has neither the capability nor the money to do such tracking. But she warns that recalcitrant watermen ought to get used to the idea of digital harvest reporting. If it’s as successful as it has been, she says, DNR may make it mandatory.