THE GREY DECEMBER SKIES signal Oregon's crabbing season is underway. The deck of the Delma Ann is awash with cold seawater, and below, in the fish hold, are thousands of large, brown-backed Dungeness crab. Captain Al Pazar steers his vessel through the whitecaps toward a string of buoys. His crew of two haul out a round wiry pot, drop the dozens of crabs into the dump chute, fill the pot with fresh bait, then swing it back overboard to sink down to the dark ocean bottom. Buffeted by the cold wind, the men haul out another, and then another, and when they reach the end of the string, the boat pounds toward the next catch, until over the course of a day-or sleepless night-they've emptied several hundred. "It's gruesome work," Pazar says.

Pazar, a thick-set man with large hands and a stubble beard, has been fishing these waters since 1975. This season, he counts 500 pots in his gear-many fewer than in the past. The drop is part of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's (ODFW) new limits that go into effect this December in what they tout as a move toward a sustainable fishery. For the first time, crabbers must match the number of pots they use with an official scale, and throw out any surplus. Crabbers who have typically landed the biggest catch are restricted to 500- in some cases, a third of their former supply. Mid-range crabbers, such as Pazar, get the same allocation, while those with historically the smallest catch will be designated a limit of either two or three hundred traps.

These regulations are long overdue, says Ed Backus, Ecotrust's vice president of Fisheries. As the stocks of salmon and groundfish have declined, fishermen along the West Coast have moved into crab, he says. "They've got the big boats and muscle to put out 1,000 pots and they've been bringing in tons of crab, causing a glut in the market. The goal of these limits is to reduce the pressure on the fishery and restore some level of social equity," he says.

A small organization called the Ocean Resource Team in Port Orford has been lobbying hard for the new rules. "We need to establish an equal playing ground among crab fishermen," says spokeswoman Valerie Mecum, whose husband is a crabber. "Fishermen from the north have been coming down here with their great big boats and laying their crab gear all over our grounds and, if the weather's bad, we can't get out. Then they take all the crabs away from our market." (Large boats are safer because they can better withstand big ocean swells and the currents at the bar between port and sea.)

The new limits could help Oregon leverage certification by the Marine Stewardship Council by showing that the fishery is being managed with a goal of sustainability. Such a certification could give the crab extra value, making the limits seem like an all-around winner.

But several dozen fishermen are bitterly opposed to the limits. Bob Eder has been sinking crab pots for 32 years, starting out with what he calls a terrible boat and a small supply of pots. Since then, he has become Oregon's single biggest producer of crab. "I've worked hard for everything I have," he says. The rules will reduce his gear by 900 pots and as a result, he says, will slash his income in half.

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He is one of 36 fishermen-out of a fleet of 433-challenging the regulations in court as part of the coalition Fishermen Against Irresponsible Reallocation. They believe the limits unfairly target the biggest operations. Since Eder has a bigger boat with a larger crew, his expenses for fuel and insurance are greater than for crabbers such as Pazar, yet he is limited to the same number of pots. "I've never had a citation or done anything wrong, but it feels as if I'm being disproportionately punished," he says.

For now the arguments in favor and against the limits are still somewhat speculative. No one is certain what impact Oregon's new rules will have. Washington instituted similar limits in 1999 and Mitch Vance, shellfish manager at ODFW, says the biggest ten suppliers of crab before they went into effect were the same ones who hauled in the most crab afterwards. But Eder believes that was because some of the largest crabbers moved into Oregon's waters to supplement the reduction. He says he may now fish more often off California, where legislation to introduce limits was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004 for being anti-competitive.

Some benefits to the limits are nearly assured, says Vance. Fewer traps should mean less litter on the ocean floor. The ODFW estimates that every year crabbers lose at least 20,000 pots, sometimes because of the strong currents stirred up by winter storms that drag the buoys far up the coast, and sometimes because the gear gets accidentally cut off by other boats. Since fishermen will have fewer pots to monitor, the fishing department believes it will also reduce "ghost fishing." Pots left out too long can cause the crabs inside to starve to death and their decaying bodies then lure yet more crabs to their deaths.

What everyone will be watching for is how the limits affect the season's fishing. Proponents say it will reduce the glut of crab that usually heralds the season's opening. Though crabbing is legal through August 14, most of the large male crabs-the only ones that can be legally caught-are typically all found by mid-winter.

This season Pazar will hang up 125 pots and he says it's for the best. He's thinking of the long-term health of the fishery, he says. "Crab has become the anchor fishery for communities from Brookings to Astoria," he says. Right now, Oregon has the best crab fishing anywhere. Last year crabbers hauled in a near-record 28 million pounds. "The currents are good, the water's cold, and there's a strong upwelling, which stirs up the nutrients," Pazar says. But that's not likely to last since the ocean follows a cycle. "Only if we take care of the crabs now, will they be productive next time around."