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Marine Resource Bulletin Vol. 27, No. 1 & 2, Virginia Sea Grant, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Virginia Marine Resource Bulletin

Contents

The Blue Crab Fishery

Resource Management Issues

Blue Crab Natural History

Down to a Fine Art

The Soft Crab Fishery

The Blue Crab Pot Fishery

Status of the Fishery and Management Strategies Habitat's Role

Submerged Aquatic Vegetation

Biological Profile

Bycatch in the Virginia Menhaden Fishery: A Reexamination of the Data

Economic Aspects Of The Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery: Problems And The Future Or Should The Industry Be Revitalized?, James E. Kirkley, Douglas Lipton

VIMS Books and Book Chapters

Between 1930 and 1939, average annual landings of Crassostrea virginica from Chesapeake Bay was 32 million pounds (meat weight). During the period 1980-88, average annual landings declined to 14.6 million pounds. In 1990, landings declined to less than 3 million pounds of meats. It has been this consistent downward trend in landings, particularly since 1983, that has concerned that National Marine Fisheries Service, various state agencies, and members of the oyster industry. In response to declining harvests, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Sea Grant Program in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service and various state agencies and sea grant …

Sediment Characteristics And Inorganic Fluxes Associated With Vegetated And Nonvegetated Subtidal Habitats Of The Goodwin Islands, Virginia, Christopher P. Buzelli

VIMS Books and Book Chapters

The Goodwin Islands Ecosystem is a National Estuarine Research Reserve location and consisting of about 200 ha of intertidal mudflat and marshes surrounded by about 600 ha of vegetated and nonvegetated subtidal habitats extending to the -2.0 m depth contour. It is hypothesized that vegetated subtidal and intertidal habitats are seasonal sources of oxygen and fixed carbon and sinks for inorganic nutrients while sediments represent longer- term carbon storage for the ecosystem as a whole. This study focuses upon subtidal sediment microalgal distribution and biomass, sediment organic and inorganic content, and sediment/water oxygen and nutrient exchange processes in vegetated and …

Evidence For A Relation Between A White Perch Young-Of-The-Year Index And Indices Of Later Life Stages, Thomas C. Mosca Iii, Herbert M. Austin, David M. Plotner

VIMS Books and Book Chapters

Juvenile indices are employed in fisheries management to predict the future abundance of harvestable adults. Frequently, regulations on the utilization of the resource, and a lack of fishery independent abundance data, make verification of the prediction accuracy impossible. In the case of white perch in Virginia, this is not so. Using the weighting system developed for a Chesapeake Bay-wide index of juvenile striped bass abundance based on summertime beach seine data collected in nursery ground waters, we developed a similar index for white perch in the Virginia portion of the Bay. Regressions against Virginia Institute of Marine Science otter trawl …

Effects Of A Polyhaline Sav Bed On Spatial And Temporal Variability In Water Quality, Kenneth A. Moore, Jill L. Goodman

VIMS Books and Book Chapters

Beds of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAY) may moderate or enhance the standing stocks of dissolved oxygen, nutrients, suspended particulates, and chlorophyll in water masses that are exchanged with adjacent channel areas of the Bay or its tributaries. This study investigated the short-term variability in commonly measured water column parameters at four stations located along a 1 km transect across a polyhaline SAV bed in the lower Bay. Data were collected for 10-day periods during June, August, and October 1993 at 15 min to 3 hr intervals using automated water samplers, arrays of spherical PAR quantum sensors, and Hydrolab datasondes. A …

The Precarious State Of The Chesapeake Public Oyster Resource, William J. Hargis Jr., Dexter S. Haven

VIMS Books and Book Chapters

The 243,000 acres of Virginia's public oyster reefs (a.k.a. the Baylor Grounds) have been extremely productive of usable and saleable (market .md seed) oysters (Crassostrea virginica), oyster shells and oyster shell by-products. Archaeological remains and historical records show that they have yielded great numbers of whole oysters, oyster meats, oyster "seed" and shell since the 01esapeake was formed some 3,000 years BP. In the last century their natural productivity, as indicated by commercial harvest records (the only long-term data available), has declined markedly. In 1904, Vrrginia's total market (adult) oyster harvest was about 7.6 million bushels (mostly from public grounds). …