All You Can Eat (AYCE) Makes Waste (and Waist)

Here's one of my half baked ideas from a few years ago...

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Here in the Chesapeake region, we've been experiencing a serious decline in the population of the Chesapeake Bay blue crabs (more). The debate over the cause has seemed to focus mainly on overharvesting by commercial crabbers, overharvesting by recreational crabbers, a decline in aquatic grasses and an increase in the population of predators (mainly rockfish).

While I tend to believe overharvesting is largely responsible, I think unnecessary stress is put on the crab population by the practice of having "All You Can Eat" (AYCE) restaurant promotions.
I know this is a time honored tradition but I've seen people eat just the "easy" parts of the crab (e.g., the back fin meat) and throw the rest away. This is simply a waste of a valuable and increasingly scarce resource. Also, the last time I ate an AYCE seafood restaurant (no longer in business), there were a goodly number of undersized crabs being served. (Crabs are supposed to measure at least five inches across from point to point).

The restaurants probably schedule their AYCE promotions prior to knowing how abundant crabs will be. Then if crabs are scarce, I suspect the restaurants will take whatever crabs they can get the cheapest (which translates to small crabs).

My theory is that AYCE puts unnecessary (and easily preventable) stress on the crab population. In short, AYCE makes waste!