Reports of high mortality resulting from the impoundment of crabs (Callinectes sapidus) during the preshedding period, to produce soft crabs, have been current in Maryland and Virginia for many years. The death rate of crabs on floats has been estimated by certain of the operators to run as high as 86% at Cape Charles, and to figures nearly as high at Crisfield and elsewhere during one season of the year. Such a high death rate during a period of three weeks or a month, midseason, of a fishing period of barely five months' duration, seemed to affect adversely the problem of conservation of the species involved and to contribute, in part, directly to the decline experienced in the crab industry of the Chesapeake Bay. A study of this mortality and the factors influencing it have been in progress at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory for two seasons.
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