November 9, 2009: The Virginia Marine Resources Commission has received 665 bids from commercial crabbers, in a license buyback program aimed at reducing harvest pressure on the Bay's blue crab population as efforts continue to rebuild the stock. The agency has $6.7 million in federal crab disaster fund to spend in the so-called reverse auction, and the bids totaled $30.4 million. Decisions on which bids to accept will be made over the next few weeks. Once accepted, a crabbing license will be permanently retired




VMRC Blue Crab License Buy-Back Program
A total of $6,724,470 was allocated to the Blue Crab License Buy-Back Program. Blue
crab harvesters were classified into one of three categories—full-time, part-time, or wait
list—based on their past harvest activity. Each harvester category was allotted a
percentage of the total allocation funds, which is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Allocation of license buy-back funds among harvester categories.
Harvester
Category Percentage Allocation
Full-Time 50% $3,362,235
Part-Time 30% $2,017,341
Wait List 20% $1,344,894
To date, a total of 665 bids have been submitted to the VMRC. The total value of these
bids is $30,432,897. Table 2 provides a summary of the number and value of bids
received for both crab and peeler pots, within each harvester category.
Table 2. Summary of the number and value of bids received, by gear and harvester
category.
Harvester Bids Received
Category Gear Number Value
Full-Time Crab Pot 47 $5,405,997
Peeler Pot 27 $1,667,400
Part-Time Crab Pot 234 $13,911,089
Peeler Pot 126 $4,565,229
Wait List Crab Pot 141 $2,866,777
Peeler Pot 90 $2,016,405
Total Crab Pot 422 $22,183,863
Peeler Pot 243 $8,249,034