" Blue crab is part of the holy trinity of Maryland seafood, made up of oysters, rockfish, and blue crab," says chef Spike Gjerde of Baltimore ’ s Woodberry Kitchen. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, approximately 50 percent of the country’ s blue crab harvest comes from Maryland waters.Īnd they are an essential part of the region’ s culinary heritage. As a result, in Maryland, steamed is usually the only option on offer.īlue crabs can be found in waters as far north as Nova Scotia and as far south as Uruguay, but the crustacean's strongest association has always been with Maryland. (Boiling proponents argue that steaming pushes the internal temperature too high and dries out the flesh.) But oddly enough, Marylanders complain that the seasoned boiling water makes the crab taste too evenly seasoned - they prefer the variety in heat and seasoning that comes from tasting the spice that rubs on to the crabmeat from their fingers. Marylanders will tell you that boiling makes the crabmeat wet, rather than just moist. Marylanders prepare hard shells and other seafood by steaming them, rather than the boiling that is common along the rest of the East Coast and Louisiana. And not just any crabs: We’re talking about the delicate, sweet blue crab bounty of the Chesapeake Bay, whose Latin name Callinectes sapidus means "beautiful swimmer." There are few things that get Marylanders more excited than tearing into a bushel of red-shelled beauties encrusted with crab seasoning, or enjoying the delicacy of a fried soft shell, accompanied by an ice cold Natty Boh. Juvenile crabs rely on abundant underwater grasses to hide from predators, and on thriving oyster reefs to find food.Summers in Maryland aren’t summer without crabs. “In some kind of way, she worked out for us,” he said.Ĭhris Moore, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s senior regional ecosystem scientist, said blue crabs have probably benefited from steady improvements in the bay’s health at large. Brown, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, said he was glad to see such restrictions “paying off for a change.” Plus, he added, Mother Nature was kind to the crabs. For example, watermen cannot catch male crabs less than five inches across from April through Jul 14, and 5¼ inches from July 14 through Dec. Hesapeake Bay Foundation officials called the results encouraging, but also not surprising, and urged officials to maintain strong limitations on the crab fishery. In the annual crab survey, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science dredge up crabs, count and measure them before releasing them back into waterways at 1,500 sites throughout the bay from December through March. That year, juveniles numbered a record 587 million, while the population totaled 765 million in all. The crab population hasn’t been larger in the bay since 2012. It was the second year in a row of strong growth in the juvenile crab population, from some of its lowest numbers of the past three decades in 2017. That’s what happened during the winter of 2018, when a third of adult crabs in the bay died while hibernating in the mud.īut ahead of the 2019 crabbing season, which began April 1, currents helped send a surging number of larval crabs up the bay, from their birthplace at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Weather and current patterns can significantly help or hinder the spawning of a new generation of crabs each year, and cold temperatures can kill many crabs during the winter. The blue crab population can be notoriously fickle, challenging efforts to balance conservation and commercial harvest. “The blue crab population is both healthy and thriving, which is great news for the entire Bay,” Natural Resources Secretary Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio said in a statement. The results suggest a strong crabbing season is ahead for Chesapeake watermen, with strong numbers of adults ready to be harvested as waters warm this month and a booming crop of young that could grow large enough to be legally caught by the fall, or the 2020 crabbing season. “The female abundance of blue crabs is close to our target, and the juvenile population is above average,” Michael Luisi, fisheries monitoring and assessment director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said in a statement. With a total of nearly 600 million crabs in the bay, the species is close to or above benchmarks that indicate a healthy and sustainable population. The number of spawning-age females, a key measure of future population growth potential, reached 190 million, a 29 percent increase over the previous winter. Scientists in Maryland and Virginia found that the bay’s crabs are at their most plentiful in seven years. There are nearly twice as many juvenile crabs in Chesapeake Bay waters as there were a year ago, according to an annual population survey.
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