INTRODUCTION
If you've been watching our show for the last two weeks…you may remember that we've started a journey across one of America's best known highways…Route 50.

This week we find ourselves on the Chesapeake Bay…where watermen have seen their livelihood threatened as their blue crab harvest has declined in recent years. And as Jeff Swicord explains… therein lies "the Waterman's tale".

NARRATOR
For thirty years, Bobby Abner has risen before first light to work the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

BOBBY ABNER
"Alright…drop her."

NARRATOR
Bobby is a Maryland Waterman…his heritage, the Bay's rich harvest of crabs and fish.

BOBBY ABNER
"This is my son's crab pots right there. We told him there were some crabs here. We put a load of pots in there."

NARRATOR
It's a life he labors until sundown everyday. A life he chose long ago.

BOBBY ABNER
"One day, my father, who worked for the C&P Telephone Company says, 'Well, if you catch a few crabs, we will cook them and I will take them to my workers in Washington.' And we ended up doing that. And it got so that the orders started getting bigger and bigger. Instead of one or two dozen I was sending up a day, I ended up selling four or five dozen. It wasn't a whole lot of crabs, but we were getting a whole dollar a dozen for them at that time.

Jump in there and give me a line Trey."

NARRATOR
At the time, Bobby was twelve years old. Forty years later, he's a little reluctant to admit that the Bay he knows and loves is changing.

BOBBY ABNER
"There is not anything down my way. We can't make a living down there. At least here we can catch a few crabs. In fact it's pretty good up here at times."

NATURAL SOUND - ENGINE STARTING

NARRATOR
This morning, Bobby and his crew have moved 70 kilometers up the Bay from his home. It's been a bad year for crabs… and many watermen have been forced out of business.

BOBBY ABNER
"It's kind of challenging all the time. You've got to out guess them all the time. You've got to think where they are going to be tomorrow. Not where they are going to be today."

NATURAL SOUND - MUSIC

NARRATOR
Where the crabs will be tomorrow is the question on the minds of both waterman and conservationists like Bill Goldsborough, Senior Scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

BILL GOLDSBOROUGH
"Probably, if we have the data we can say for sure, that watermen are now fishing roughly twice as much gear as they did twenty years ago, for no more catch."

NARRATOR
Goldsborough argues that the reproductive capacity of the Bay's crab population cannot sustain the amount of crabbing gear watermen are using today.

BILL GOLDSBOROUGH
"If you cut back, say five percent a year in the amount of gear someone can use, and yet over a period of a couple of years, the crab population will respond because it is fairly resilient. And you end up having greater standing stock. The amount of crabs that are actually available at any one time. And larger crabs on average."

GEORGE ABBEY
"We've got a male here that looks to be about five inches across the lateral spines."

NARRATOR
George Abbey is another scientist concerned about the bay's declining crab population.

GEORGE ABBEY
"It's barely legal and it's not a particularly good crab."

NARRATOR
In 1968, George began studying the impact of cooling water discharged from the new Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. Thirty three-years later, his data shows no environmental effects from the plant, but stands as the longest running crab population survey on the Bay.

GEORGE ABBEY
"The abundance of legal crabs has certainly gone down. Sizes have gone down. And when size goes down for legal crabs, commercial landings will go down as well."

NARRATOR
George Abbey proposes a different solution than Bill Goldsborough. Instead of limiting the amount of gear a waterman can use, he wants to raise the legal size limit for crabs above the current five inches or 13-centemeters. That would allow the crabs to molt, or shed their shell and grow one more time, before being caught.

GEORGE ABBEY
"That's about a six and eighth inch crab, we haven't seen many of these. We used to see fair numbers of them like that over here years ago."

NARRATOR
According to Abbey's research, a 13-centimeter crab that molts one more time, may grow twenty percent in size, and gain up to fifty percent in weight.

GEORGE ABBEY
"Go head and drop it over, we'll be taking bottom readings."

NARRATOR
Crabs are sold by weight. A larger, heavier crab would allow watermen to fish less gear for the same amount of profit.

GEORGE ABBEY
"Temperature 23-6, 23-6 temperature."

NARRATOR
That in turn translates into less pressure on the crab population.

GEORGE ABBEY
"Alright now, you just want to run the pots in and then measure them on the way to Kenwood."

NATURAL SOUND - MUSIC

GEORGE ABBEY
"We are trying to make things better for the commercial fishermen so that he can make a living catching a decent number of crabs with, I don't want to say minimal expenditures, but with less effort, and maybe less money spent. And still have a good sustainable fishery that is going to last well into the future."

NARRATOR
A year later, the State of Maryland has implemented new restrictions on commercial crabbers. Bobby Abner now has seven and half-hours after sunrise to retrieve and reset crabbing gear. There will be more restrictions in the future and Bobby is fishing more to supplement his income. He is also considering moving south to another state.

BOBBY ABNER
"Now comes the fun part, picking them out."

NARRATOR
Whatever the future may bring, crabbing will always be more than just a livelihood for Bobby Abner.

BOBBY ABNER
"This is our alewife. This is our bait fish right here.

NARRATOR
It is heritage… one he fully intends to pass on to his children and grandchildren.

NATURAL SOUND - MUSIC

BOBBY ABNER
"A lot of times I will go out and shut my engines off. Just to listen to nothing. Just to hear the boat creak, maybe a bird fly by, maybe a fish jump. Just to hear nothing. To hear the wind. This gives me, as far as I am concerned, peace with myself. Peace with the things I do and tranquility."

NARRATOR
Off Route 50, on the Chesapeake Bay, Jeff Swicord, VOA-TV.

For more information on this story, see:
- The Chesapeake Bay Region - http://www.his.com/~matson/bay.htm
- Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs - http://clab.cecil.cc.md.us/faculty/biology/Chesapeake/crab.html
- Maryland Watermen Association - http://www.marylandwatermen.com/
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation - http://savethebay.cbf.org/