Gov. Timothy M. Kaine asked the federal government yesterday to declare Virginia's blue-crab population a Fishery Resource Disaster and to financially assist struggling watermen.

An early estimate of the economic impact on state watermen as a result of recent crab-fishing restrictions is pegged between $11 million and $15 million over the next three years, Kaine wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.

In recent days, U.S. Rep. Robert J. Wittman, R-1st, and a bipartisan group of Virginia legislators asked Kaine to petition the federal government. The federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act provides for economic assistance to states facing a fishery disaster.

Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr.'s office also got involved April 22, when state fishery regulators approved a slate of measures designed to protect female crabs.

Among other things, the decisions shut down the Dec. 1 to March 31 crab-dredging season and prohibited the taking of female crabs during the final month of the crab-potting season beginning Oct. 27.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved the bans in a drastic attempt to stem the decline of the last great commercial fishery in the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland also recently enacted regulations to reduce harvest pressure and has been working with Virginia on a management plan.

The annual blue-crab harvest generates $125 million a year for the bay's seafood industry and employs thousands of people.

Crab numbers have plunged 70 percent since 1990 despite harvest restrictions enacted by both states seven years ago. The commercial harvest from both states has fallen from 118.3 million pounds in 1993 to 44.1 million last year. Experts fear one severe storm could initiate a collapse of the bay-wide blue-crab fishery, according to Kaine's office.

Virginia is considering offering jobs, such as planting underwater grasses or building oyster reefs, to watermen. Talks have focused on directing aid to Tangier Island in the middle of the bay, where people have few employment options outside the crab fishery.

Wittman said he is working with other congressmen from Virginia and Maryland to prepare a request for aid in a supplement appropriations bill Congress will be considering. Congressmen from New England and the West Coast are making similar plans to help fishermen displaced by a salmon-fishing ban and restrictions on Atlantic groundfish, Wittman said.

Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Olympia Meola contributed to this report.