“About 500 commercial crabbers took the state up on its offer to pay them to surrender their licenses. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources mailed buyback offers last month to almost 3700 holders of “”limited crab catcher”” licenses, setting a response deadline of July 31st. The state says it needs to retire a large number of its unused licenses to help the crab population in the Chesapeake Bay to recover. The buyback was not what the state had hoped, officials said, although crabbers were asked to name their price and that might have caused some confusion among them.”