Crab Country: An Insatiable Quest on the Chesapeake Bay (2024)

Just before sun up,

Billy Rice sets out on the water that he’s known all of his life. On this cool October morning in 2019,it’s like glass—calm and clear, catching the reflectionof the full moon as he cuts fast acrossPiccowaxen Creek, riding the swells and aroundthe shallows that lead him to the wide, majesticPotomac River.

A V of Canada geese floats in the twilight sky.An osprey nest sits empty. A duck blind waits forits winter brush. The sun, just beginning to seepover the horizon, casts orange light like some distantfire along the silhouette shoreline.

This isautumn on the Chesapeake, and for a little whilelonger, crab season.

“This was all I ever wanted to do,” says Rice,65, who sold his first haul at the age of 10 andbecame a full-time waterman after graduatinghigh school. Now, with his ballcap backwards andflannel tucked into olive green bibs, he’s headed outtoward his nearly 500 crab pots—galvanized wirecages dropped to the river bottom, attached to arust-red buoy that bobs on the brackish tide.

By a quarter past seven, he slows the boat,sets it in neutral, and hooks his first line overthe hydraulic puller, the pot rising through some20 feet of water. He grabs, unlatches, and, with aswift shake, empties it, as a half-dozen crabs aresent clacking into the culling box. He refills thebait trap with razor clams, splashes the cage overboard,and continues on his course—west to east,east to west along the Potomac—the boat enginepurring as the dawn burns off into a bright blueday.

At one point, Rice holds an unlikely catch into the air—a wrigglingfemale crab, or sook, whose orange belly bears some twomillion eggs that she’ll carry more than 100 miles to the edge ofthe Atlantic Ocean—before gently tossing her back into the waves.“With care,” he says. “Those are worth more to me out here.”

By lunchtime, some 15 bushel baskets will be packed over thebrim, full of hundreds of Maryland blue crabs—named for theircerulean limbs—that survived the summer but are now bound formarket this evening. The others that evaded his pots will soon behunkered down for winter, literally burying into the sand or mud,and Rice, like so many other Chesapeake watermen, including his44-year-old son Rocky, will move on to other species, all the whilecounting the days till spring.

“There aren’t as many as there used to be, but crabs are suchvariable creatures, controlled so much by the water,” says Rice, hisslight Southern drawl lilting out across its surface as he steers home.“When you learn about their life cycles, every one of them is somethinglike a miracle.”

As the crow flies, a Maryland blue crab’s life begins morethan 100 miles south of Baltimore. Across state linesinto Virginia, the microscopic larvae of the callinectessapidus—“beautiful, savory swimmer” in Greek andLatin—are released into the open water at the mouth ofthe Chesapeake Bay. There, they drift on currents into the AtlanticOcean, where they feed and grow for weeks to months, eventuallyreturning to morph into juveniles and, at a mere two and a half millimeters,begin their great migration up the continent’s largest estuary.A trip that would take a sailboat several days.

But slowly and surely, they make their way up the bay, headingtoward its increasingly fresh and shallow tributaries, even intothe flats of the Susquehanna River. They scavenge for food—small fish,oysters, clams, even other crabs—and molt their shells multipletimes, reaching sexual maturity the following year. After an elaboratemating ritual, the males, known as jimmies, move on to othermates, while the females once again head south, only to repeat theancient cycle that still stumps experts to this day.

“I’m going to tell you what—I’d have better luck giving youthe Powerball numbers than predicting what crabs are going todo,” says Blair Baltus, 62, a retired Essex crabber and president ofthe Baltimore County Waterman’s Association. “I can guaranteeyou three things: they swim, they bite, and they taste good. Theymagically appear every year, and they magically disappear. Whatkept me out there, you ask? Probably chasing them.”

That mysterious thrill is perhaps one of the reasons why we’re so captivated by the blue crab on a bay brimming withmarine life. While they exist as far north as NovaScotia and south as Argentina, it is only from Aprilto December (though the season largely ends by Halloween)that we can catch Maryland’s most iconicspecies in our own state waters. Even then, there arecountless factors—biological, environmental, economic,political—that influence whether they evermake it to our table at all.

Like Rice says, a miracle. And he and the other5,400 Maryland watermen recognized on the stateseal are part of that long tradition of trying to understandtheir wants and ways.

Crabs have alwaysbeen synonymous with life along the Chesapeake—Algonquian for “at a big river,” with archaeologistsfinding remnants of crab feasts from both Native Americans and early colonists. “I well recall the timewhen prime hard crabs [were] hawked in HollinsStreet of summer mornings at 10 cents a dozen,”wrote H.L. Mencken of his childhood in the 1880s. But it wasn’t until the 20th century that they crawled their way to thetop of the heap.

Contrary to popular belief, blue crabs weren't always king on the Chesapeake, instead historically outshinedby other species. But by 1980, the shad industry had shuttered, theoyster beds were decimated by disease, and the rockfish, rattled byoverfishing and pollution, were headed toward a moratorium. The inventionof the modern-day crab pot during World War II had alreadyset the shift in motion, and before long, the blue crab would becomethe most valuable fishery on the Chesapeake, designated our statecrustacean in 1989.

“Crabs were always popular in Baltimore, but back in the day,crabbing was really just something to do when you weren’t oysteringor fishing,” says Baltus. “Since then, the demand has skyrocketed.I’d say at least 50 percent of the big rigs in Baltimore Countynow own their own crab houses. They wanted to get in on it, too.”

In Maryland, the commercial blue crab harvest is now worthmore than three times that of oysters and rockfish combined, withsome 34 million pounds harvested in 2019, at a dockside valueof more than $56 million. As of press time, a bushel of malesexceeded $300, while a pound of meat peaked at $50—driven inpart by the coronavirus pandemic, during which local consumersflocked for carry-out crabs as a source of comfort.

In uncertain times, it’s no surprise that’s where we’d spendour money. After all, this is the place where Old Bay goes on everything—French fries, potato chips, ice cream (though the localsknow: J.O. Spice). Where brown paper trumps white tablecloths.Where a feast only means one thing, and it’s happening in yourown backyard.

“I eat them once a week, sometimes a whole dozen,” says Riceof his prized catch. “Of course, if they’re going for good money, I’llsell them and buy a steak.”

If you’re trying to understand just how insatiable theappetite has become for Chesapeake Bay blue crabs,look no further than Dorchester County on Maryland’s EasternShore. Here, past teetering stacks of crab pots andhand-painted signs that read LIVE CRABS, stand someof the last crab picking houses, the most famous ofwhich might be right off Route 50 on the way to Ocean City—the J.M. Clayton Company.

Steam hisses out of its oldcinderblock building on theChoptank River in Cambridge—shades of the once-bustling workingwaterfront now occupied bycondominiums and the occasionalcruise ship. The county’s othereight main picking houses resideon Hoopers Island, a remote archipelago located a half-hoursouth past the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, where inkymarsh sinks into the bay.

“A lot’s changed,” says Jack Brooks, who runs the fifth-generationbusiness with his two brothers and son. “This was oncethe center of commerce. Now we’re the only seafood place left.”

But much as it always has been, every morning during theMaryland crab season, watermen arrive at the dock and offloadtheir harvest, which is sorted, steamed, and cooled before eventuallybeing pushed through swinging doors into the fluorescentlight of the picking room—the heartbeat of this operation.

Inside, the air is filled with the briny scent of seafood and amedley of sounds—metal stools moving across a concrete floor,the clatter of discarded shells, Spanish music on the stereo.Dozens of Hispanic women line stainless steel tables piled highwith now-red blue crabs, their eyes focused, their knives like a sixthdigit, as they swiftly remove the crustacean’s meat in a matterof mere seconds. For Consuelo Martinez, 47, who has been here formore than two decades, it takes just about 20.

“It’s easy,” she says, cleanly swiping every ounce of jumbolump and backfin out of an intricate shell before moving on tothe next one, oftentimes without even looking.

Like the majority of the men and women at J.M. Clayton,Martinez arrived here from Mexico through the federal H-2Bvisa program, which helps employers hire migrant workers forseasonal jobs. Seafood picking houses were once staffed by alocal, largely Black, female workforce, with their skills passed downthrough generations. Before the first Bay Bridge was built in1952, these tidewater communities carved industries out oftheir isolation, but as times changed, so did their labor, withresidents moving to larger towns in search of more stable work.In 1980, there were dozens of picking houses in Crisfield alone,where fading murals still declare it “the crab capital of theworld.” Today, only one stands.

“Not many parents are raising their kids to be the best crab pickeranymore,” says Brooks, noting that other local picking houseswere forced to close after refusing to hire foreign labor. “We’d loveto have local workers, but unfortunately, they’re just not here.”

Not that they don’t try to find them. The picking houses takeout classifieds, hire temp agencies, and host job fairs, with J.M.Clayton once trucking a bus to Baltimore to lure folks to the shore.

But picking crabs can be a thankless job—starting at5 a.m., Martinez helps moves about 2,000 pounds ofmeat a day during the season’s height, paid by thepound or hour, whichever ends up being more—andthe work isn’t year-round.

Even still, the H-2B program comes with its ownuncertainties. Using its lottery system, five of thosenine main picking houses failed to receiveseasonal workers this spring, shut out in partby the landscaping, construction, and hospitalityindustries that vie for the same 66,000 visas. J.M.Clayton was one of the unlucky ones, starting off theseason with only a quarter of its normal workforce.

Brooks hopes that Congress might eventuallyexempt seafood from the visa cap or offer exceptionsfor returning workers. He points to recentstudies by the University of Maryland and MarylandDepartment of Agriculture, which found thatwithout H-2B visas, the state’s economy would lose upward of $150 million annually, and that eachtemporary employee in turn supports over two anda half American jobs—from the watermen to thetruck drivers to the restaurants.

“I tell folks, if you have some line on all ofthese people who want these jobs, please, sendthem to me,” says Aubrey Vincent of Lindy’s Seafood,a second-generation picking house in FishingCreek that was also shut out this spring. “Thevisas are now an essential part of our industry.”

Part of that is due to the year-round demandfor blue crab, not just from Marylanders, but theentire country, and beyond. There are now Phillips Seafoodsin six major airports, and “Maryland-style” crabcakes sold on menus from Connecticut to Coloradoand California.

Vincent sells upward of $10 million in seafoodeach year, some 90 percent of which is bluecrab, primarily to restaurants and retailers throughwholesalers like J.J. McDonnell in Elkridge, whosetowering warehouses suggest through their sheer size just how much the market hasgrown. Some of the meat herworkers picked this morning wasin the Tangier Sound yesterday,will be shipped across the bridgetonight, and could land on a Baltimoremenu tomorrow.

It’s impossible to keep up,and as such, no Maryland picking house relies on Maryland crabalone. Vincent sources blue crab from throughout the ChesapeakeBay, including Virginia, as well as into Delaware, and then,when need be, farther south down the Eastern Seaboard—theCarolinas, Louisiana—working with some 100 American watermen.

This is the recipe for survival in the 21st-century crab business,as well as a sustainable fishery.

“If we were just to rely on what came out of these waters,we’d devastate the Chesapeake Bay in no time—it’d be everylast crab,” says Chris Phelps, seafood buyer at J.J. McDonnell,speaking to the delicate balance of supply and demand whendealing with a limited natural resource. “We’re talking literallytons and tons of crab meat are put onto our trucks each day.”

The hard shells of all-you-can-eat feasts still hail fromthe U.S., as crabs can’t survive out of water long enoughto travel farther distances, but the same can’t be said forcrab meat. Since the 1990s, the domestic market has confrontedincreasing competition from international imports. Around the clock, pounds of meat from the same blue crab, as well as an entirely different species, move fresh, frozen,or pasteurized by the plane or boatload from the likes ofVenezuela, Colombia, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, the Philippines,and so on. It is estimated that more than 80 percentof our seafood is imported, so there’s a decent chancethat the luscious lump garnishing your bloody Mary, swimmingin your crab dip, even at the base of your Maryland crabsoup, is not from North America, let alone the Chesapeake.

“It’s all the way around the world, and the market is onlygrowing,” says Phelps, noting the ripple effects of COVID’sclosed crab plants abroad and disrupted global supply chains, only compounding a scarcity of crab.“We’re at record-high prices, by a long shot. And I expect it toonly get worse.”

Of course, at the end of the day, Mother Nature stillhas the last word. Ocean weather can sweep crablarvae out to sea before they even make it up theChesapeake. Water salinity, impacted by precipitation,can influence crab migrations, while habitat,namely underwater grasses, which ebb and flow with water quality,is key for crab growth and reproduction. Pollution remains aconstant problem, and at every corner, there are predators, fromblue catfish to blue heron to human hands.

This May, local watermen lamentedthat mild spring temperatures were keeping the crabs at bay in Maryland, as the cold-blooded crustaceans often wait to emerge fromtheir winter slumbers until the water exceeds 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Around that same time, the Maryland Department of Natural Resourcesannounced that the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population fell by 30 percent this year, driven largely by the lowest number of juvenilessince records began in 1989. Adult males were also well below theirlong-term average, though there was a slight increase in females—still far from their target.

“It definitely gets our attention, but it’s not unprecedented,”says DNR biologist Shaun Miller, referring to the species’ ever-fluctuatingpopulations. “There are high highs and low lows. We’llwait to see how it all plays out, if next year’s numbers start to showa true trend,” noting that watermen could potentially see a lightercatch this fall and into next spring.

Miller sees the source of these statistics firsthand every winter when, from December through March, he leads the Maryland portion of the bay-wide winter dredge survey, which estimates the annual abundance of blue crabs in the estuary.

At only 26 degrees on a quiet January morning in 2020, a pileof piping-hot summer crabs feels like another lifetime. Frost coversthe deck of the Mydra Ann, a 45-foot deadrise workboat run bylifelong waterman Roger Morris, as its hull pushes through the icynarrows of Tilghman Island out toward the open bay.

Using GPS coordinates, the men monitor 750 sites, dropping theiron dredge off the boat’s stern into the deep, dark water below, its heavy chain unrolling with a manic whirr. For exactlyone minute, at a speed of three knots, Morris then drags the machineryalong the bay bottom before hauling up its findings, which on a good run should include even a handful of slow-movingcrabs.

“Roger likes to brag he’s never been shut out,”says Miller, bundled up in a black cap and twosweatshirts, shooting the captain a sly grin.

Each specimen is examined for gender, size,weight, and missing appendages, alongside measurements of water temperature, salinity,and depth—data that will then be analyzed toassess the sustainability of the natural resource.

Because even though the fishery is technicallynot being overfished, according to the most recentsurveys, sometimes the scales can tip, and fast.

In 2008, the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fisherywas declared a national disaster after the worst harvestsince records began in the 1940s, followinga decade of decline. To avoid complete collapse,restrictions were imposed on the female harvest,including commercial bushel limits in Maryland and an eliminated winter season in Virginia, after which populations rebounded quickly, though somewould argue not enough. Following this winter’s mixed results, no major management changes were recommended by the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee, whose annual report would be released in early July.

At that point, Morris, 58, was back to work, thecold long gone as he set his nearly 1,000 crab pots around the waters of Smith Island, near the Virginia line. Having spent decades commercially dredgingcrabs—a practice now prohibited in Maryland—the fifth-generation waterman not only provides aninvaluable skillset for the biologists, but also gives credibility tothe science for his fellow watermen.

“There’s no one who wants to catch crabs more than Roger,”says Heather Brown, DNR natural resources manager, who alsohelps out on the survey. “We’re lucky to have him.”

That rapport is somewhat of a rarity on these waters, wherewatermen have historically, notoriously, been at odds with the DNR. In fact, it was only 2017 when the department’s veteran crab program managerBrenda Davis was fired without explanation, just days after GovernorHogan met with a few vocal watermen who wanted regulationseased on smaller crabs. (One year after publicly voicing disagreementwith her dismissal, Rice, then chairman of the Tidal FisheriesAdvisory Commission, was also not reappointed to his position.)

“I used to catch flack, but now it’s not so bad,” says Morris. “Most watermen believe in what I’m doing.”

He remembers the industry before it got so big—big boats, bigengines, not to mention big expenses. Bait, fuel, crew, equipment,maintenance, with a pot costing Morris less than 10 bucks in 1981;now they’re more than $50. He wonders if that’s why young peoplearen’t working the water the way they used to, with the average ageof his industry colleagues said to be approaching senior citizenship.Others say it’s a change in work ethic.

“You’re not going to get rich, like working for the state,” saysMorris, tilting a smirk back at Miller. “But if you work hard, you’ll make a living at it.”

And that he does, rising before dark, returning home in timefor dinner, driving his crabs some 30 miles north each afternoonto J.M. Clayton, while dreaming of retiring to the old way—trotlining—which is the practice of catching crabs on a string of bait bagsalong the creek and river bottoms.

“That’s what the water does to you,” says Morris. “When you’reyoung, you’re on your own, you’re making money—how could youbeat it? I went to college for one year, and it was a waste of time.Of course, as you get older, you get aches and pains. But I still getexcited in the springtime. You always think you’ll do real good.”

♦ That trademark blue.