By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANNAPOLIS, Md.--Two of the Chesapeake Bay's most important denizens are showing signs of a rebound after years of decline.

The oyster harvest this season is approaching nearly twice the amount taken last season, with some watermen still on the water in the waning weeks of the season. The upcoming crab season, meanwhile, looks promising, judging from preliminary results of a yearly winter dredge survey.

Watermen had taken 128,513 bushels of oysters from the bay through early March, compared to 72,218 for all of last season, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Waterman John Orme said he usually has quit for the season by March, but this year he is still working the South River with less than two weeks left in the season. "It's the best year in four or five years," he said.

However, this year's haul is still far below the millions of bushels that were being taken in the mid-1980s.

DNR spokesman Chuck Gates said rain and snow in recent years have kept salinity low, helping keep in check diseases that have decimated the population. Low salinity, however, also hampers reproduction, he said.

"All this is good news, to be sure, but again, must be kept in perspective," Gates said. "Recovery has not occurred, oysters are not back, this uptick is short-lived."

The bay's crab population, meanwhile, is showing signs of a continued rebound.

The annual winter dredge survey of 1,500 sites in the bay is expected to show at least a stable, if not growing population of blue crabs, which bottomed out about six years ago.

The number of young crabs, which was the highest last year since 1997, is expected to be high again this winter, said Lynn Fegley, director of DNR's blue crab program.

"What this seems to tell us is, whatever the conditions were that allowed for a good recruitment index last year are persisting this year," Fegley said.

However, the estimated population of 487 million crabs last year is still well below the 751 million taken a decade earlier, although the population has rebounded from a low of 261 million in 2001.

Crabbing limits for commercial watermen are among the factors being credited, although the factors are not completely understood, Fegley said.

"You have to, in part, because any time you impose restrictions, it certainly can't hurt," Fegley said.