In the two decades that Baltimore's Phillips Foods has been importing crabmeat from Asia, fishermen in countries such as Indonesia have had to work harder for each catch and their harvests have yielded increasingly smaller blue swimming crabs.
Now Phillips and other major U.S. crab importers, all competitors, are joining forces to reverse the trend that they played a major part in causing. The importers say they're taking steps to protect the future of what has become a key global fishery and prevent the type of overfishing that led to declines in Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.
The 11 largest importers of blue swimming crabs in the United States agreed last week to voluntarily set a minimum size for the crabs harvested in Indonesia and the Philippines. Those nations are the two largest markets for the importers, all members of the National Fisheries Institute's Crab Council.
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