Recent brutal weather was front and center during this month’s meeting of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. In January, a storm forced watermen to stay home and the Commission to postpone their monthly meeting.
In February, parts of the Chesapeake Bay region froze. People called VMRC with reports of frozen speckled trout washing up on shore.
Frozen waters led to hardship requests like one from the commercial gill net fishery asking for added fishing days to catch striped bass over 28 inches. Striped bass are strictly regulated so the commission did not act.
But it was oystermen, harvesting public grounds, who were hit the hardest.
"If you have a job, if you lose over two weeks a month of your pay, it’s definitely an emergency," J.C. Hudgins of the Virginia Waterman’s Association told commission members. "It’s going to affect you."
The commission voted unanimously to extend the oyster season by emergency regulation to March 15 in certain areas of Rappahannock River and the Chesapeake Bay.
One perhaps positive note, oyster harvests were lower in one area on the Rappahannock River because so many adult oysters had baby oysters or spat attached to their shells they had to be thrown back.