The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved a number of rule changes Thursday that will affect Florida’s blue crab fishery.
The most significant change is that the annual 10 day long blue crab trap harvest closures will now occur every other year.
The closure is only a year old, and was created to give crabbers and state workers time to identify and retrieve lost and abandoned blue crab traps.
The FWC said that staggering the closures every other year will lessen the economic impact of the closures on individual crabbers.
The January closure in Franklin through Escambia counties will take place as scheduled in 2011.
After that the Franklin-Escambia closure will occur in odd-numbered years as will the closure in Wakulla County.
Other new rule amendments change the blue crab license endorsement transfer window from September through December to May through February to increase opportunities for crabbers to transfer their endorsements to someone else and allow initial blue crab trap tags to be ordered at any time.
The new rules also will allow qualified blue crab harvesters to designate another of their own vessels to be used to temporarily pull blue crab traps while their regular vessel is repaired or replaced.
The new rules take effect on January 26th.
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