KEYRIS MANZANARES: Peter Nixon has been crabbing along the lower Chesapeake Bay area for over 50 years.

(crabs splashing) PETER NIXON: Crabs used to be thick enough when I first started crabbing that you could crab in the morning, and if it was an incoming tide, when you finished your rig, you could actually go back and fish over some of your pots again that had had enough incoming tide, 'cause the crabs feed on incoming tide.

And now, we have to let 'em sit two days.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: In 2022, the estimated number of blue crabs that lived in the bay hit a record low of 227 million.

Now, a year later, data from the Winter Dredge Survey shows a 42% increase, with 323 million blue crabs living in the bay.

Joe Grist is the Deputy Chief of Fisheries at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

JOE GRIST: They're kind of like the vultures of the bay, in a sense.

If something has passed away in the bay, if something is dead, some dead fish, something on the bottom, they're going to clean it up.

They're going to convert it back into energy in the bay and convert it back out to more crabs.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Grist says the Commission is seeing a good balanced ecosystem when it comes to blue crabs.

This year, they even voted to extend the harvest season through mid-December.

JOE GRIST: For a couple of the watermen who will continue crabbing, they may see a little bit better profit margin coming in by staying in the crabbing for November, December.

And that's, you know, so we're trying to maximize both.

We see we're okay on the ecosystem side.

Can we maximize the optimum yield side of it now for this year?

So, and again, it's a balancing act.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: But Nixon says while experts say that the blue crab population is at a sustainable level, it's nothing like the abundance the Virginia crab industry saw in the early '80s and '90s.

PETER NIXON: They're thinking about a threshold of sustainability, and I'm thinking about the same thing, but it's my threshold of sustainability, and I need a few more crabs than they need to sustain the species.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Reporting for VPM News Focal Point, I'm Keyris Manzanares.