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Confessions from a wildlife abuser....

WebSlave

WebSlave

It is what it is, but certainly not what it was.
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Yes folks, I am a wildlife abuser..... Sad to have to admit it, but I guess I really need to come clean with my sordid affliction.

Connie (my partner in crime) brought a cooler filled with 6 dozen live blue crabs back from the seafood market she just bought them from this past Friday. I had set up the torture chamber for the crabs, awaiting her return...

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The crabs were put into the torture chamber in lots of around 18 and then had a mixture of Old Bay seasoning and salt thrown on them while a combination of water and vinegar boiled underneath.

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35 minutes later (for each batch) the deed was done and the crabs were thoroughly killed and discolored from the steam and seasonings. The odor was nearly overpowering (but in a GOOD way!).

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Then to add insult to injury, like wild animals, Connie and I tore the crabs to bits, smashed the claws with hammers, and devoured the hapless creatures, leaving a wake of carnage that would not be matched even by a pride of lions tearing into their prey.

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And to make matters much worse, I bear absolutely no remorse for my deed. To be perfectly honest, I would happily do this all over again (and hopefully will) sooner rather than later.


Those crabs were absolutely scrumptious. Beyond any reasonable expectations, those were the BEST steamed crabs I can ever remember having. Out of the entire 6 dozen, there was not a single one that wasn't absolutely perfect.

Although we started early (Friday) this was supposed to be a sort of birthday (July 21) gift for me. But we did finish them all off on Monday, so certainly this fit the bill for as nice of a birthday gift that I could ever hope for. Four solid days of eating perfect steamed blue crabs is something I wouldn't have dared even dream for considering it's been quite a while since I've had ANY even slightly decent crabs to eat.

So anyway, there it is. Guilty as charged, or at least self admitted and confessed. Call the wildlife officials if you will, as all the evidence of the discarded shells from those crabs are readily available in piles out in one of my bamboo groves where we dumped them. Haul me away, I will go off to jail with a smile on my face.
 
I hate you.

I grew up in MD a stone's throw from the Chesapeake Bay. Blue crabs were one of the highlights of summer.

The last time I priced a bushel was about 10 years ago and I almost had a coronary. I like them... but not that much.
 
I'm glad you enjoyed them :) Good find on Connie's part.
Did you have butter and French bread, or what else did you eat them with?
 
bcr229 said:
I hate you.

I grew up in MD a stone's throw from the Chesapeake Bay. Blue crabs were one of the highlights of summer.

The last time I priced a bushel was about 10 years ago and I almost had a coronary. I like them... but not that much.
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I believe you are going to hate me even more when I tell you that Connie paid only $10 per dozen for those crabs.... :duck01:
 
Lucille said:
I'm glad you enjoyed them :) Good find on Connie's part.
Did you have butter and French bread, or what else did you eat them with?
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No way! Why would I want to have something else take up space in my stomach when I have steamed crabs on the table? :rofl:
 
WebSlave said:
I believe you are going to hate me even more when I tell you that Connie paid only $10 per dozen for those crabs.... :duck01:
Click to expand...

Daaaaaaaaaaaayum. Whoever hooked you up with that deal needs to go on your Christmas card list.
 
bcr229 said:
Daaaaaaaaaaaayum. Whoever hooked you up with that deal needs to go on your Christmas card list.
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Crabs are REALLY cheap down here. Retail list price is only $14 per dozen. Connie always gets a discount because she used to work there and is friends with the owner and everyone else working there.
 
OMG! I am jealous of this! I want some! It looks so damned good!

Mmm, now I want crawdads...or crabs, or lobster...:lick:
 
I'm drooling...
Being originally from Oregon, I remember going over to Newport and catching Dungeness crabs, taking them home and cooking them, then gorging on them with plenty of garlic butter for dipping. Or digging up a big bucket of clams and doing the same. Ah, there's nothing like freshly caught seafood!!!

Dawn Carrie
 
Crap, I must be hungry, my mouth just watered. Off to lunch. You are a lucky man to have access like that. All we have out he is Red Lobster or the Casinos for crabs = super fresh I'm sure.
 
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Actually I haven't been able to get any blue crabs since that time. The supply around here seems to have dried up. :(
 
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — The heat makes it’s hard to remember just how cold our winter was. But there’s a constant reminder for Virginia’s watermen that’s affecting their wallets, too.

Blue crabs are big business along the Chesapeake Bay during the summer months. They’re a Virginia tradition — steamed, deviled, or battered up and fried, blue crabs are in high demand for miles around. But this year, they’re in short supply.

Watermen, like Ray Wicker who owns Wicker’s Crab Pot Seafood in Chesapeake, say they aren’t seeing the bounty of blue crabs that they’re used to.

“We specialize in blue crabs and soft shell crabs,” Wicker said. “We normally have a good run of female crabs that we catch over in Ocean View and in the Willoughby area. This year the water temperature was cold and we lost a month of crabbing.”

Experts say frigid water resulted in one of the worst die-offs in recent history, killing more than a quarter of the Chesapeake’s blue crabs. The number of female blue crabs has reached a 12-year low, making Ray’s big spring run for bushels, a bit of a bust. And that pain gets passed to consumers too.

“When crabs are plentiful we do all you can eat, but right now we have just by the dozen,” Wicker said. “We used to catch a bushel out of every 10 pots and now we’re catching, shoot we might catch 10 bushels out of 400 pots. Our business is mainly crab and crabmeat, so a lot of our prices have had to go up due to the shortage.”

Ray said at his restaurant they’re making adjustments to the menu, little by little. He’s hoping things will rebound before lines of hungry customers die down. He said a couple of other issues compounding crabbers problems right now are restrictions limiting how much they can work. And he said the fertilizer many people use in yards dumps right back into the rivers, causing grass to grow up on their equipment, adding to maintenance costs.
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This article is a year old but I'm sure still applies

Crab catch dwindles in Indian River Lagoon

Add blue crabs and stone crabs to the list of wildlife plummeting in the Indian River Lagoon region.

While crab harvests can vary widely year-to-year, the long-term trend has been a downward spiral.

According to a FLORIDA TODAY analysis of state data:

Brevard’s commercial blue crab catch in 2012 was less than one-tenth what it was 25 years ago and the lowest since Florida began collecting the data in 1986. Fishermen bring ashore less than half the pounds of crab each trip than they did 25 years ago.

• Last year’s statewide harvest was less that half 1987’s peak. But while last year’s statewide commercial catch was 32 percent lower than the 27-year average, Brevard’s was 75 percent lower.

• Thecommercial stone crab harvest also dropped drastically in Brevard in the past 30 years, from a peak of 6,742 pounds, almost 57 pounds per trip in 1989, to 2,875 pounds last year, just 8.3 pounds per trip.

“This is the worst year we’ve seen for local crab,” said Jan Walker, vice president of Clayton’s Crab Company. That’s saying a lot: they’ve been in the business 46 years.

But Brevard’s dismal crab catch may be mirroring larger, regional downward trends.

“It’s not just us, it’s all over the country,” Walker said, referring to the similar reports they hear from Louisiana and North Carolina.

As supply has dropped, Clayton’s crab prices have increased 20 percent over the past year, Walker estimates, with jumbo blue crabs recently going for $8.49 a pound.

But the blue crab decline, in particular, raises concerns broader than just price increases. They are considered a “keystone” species, providing prey for many other important species and serving a valuable scavenger role along the lagoon bottom. Theories of their decline include natural cycles and more runoff from development that feeds algae blooms, clouding out the crabs’ seagrass hideouts. That leads some to keep blaming numerous massive redfish for gobbling up all the baby crabs.Others point to crabbers over the years taking too many virgin female, soft-shell “peeler” crabs, or past overharvesting of clams and the subsequent loss of their water-cleansing ability.

Fueling the uncertainty for both blue and stone crabs: a big portion of the catch is unknown. There are no estimates of the recreational harvest, suspected to be substantial.

But what is quantifiable paints a dismal trend for commercial crabbers, who daily pull up seaweed-filled, often-empty traps from the Indian River Lagoon.

“I’ve been through some bad ones, but this is the worst,” Mark Radler, of Merritt Island, said of the 40-plus years he’s harvested blue crabs in the lagoon.
Blue crab decline

In general, the overall mass of blue crabs in Florida dropped from the 1950s through the 1980s, increased a bit during the early to mid-1990s before significantly dropping during the late 1990’s, according to research by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
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http://www.floridatoday.com/article...80030/Crab-catch-dwindles-Indian-River-Lagoon
 
I live in Arizona, a desert state. No fresh seafood here. Last time I had real fresh seafood was when I went on vacation to Catalina Island in California....5 years ago. �� The live lobsters you get from the grocery store just aren't the same. They are practically tasteless, comparatively, and I won't even mention the 'fresh' fish from the meat counter.*sigh*
 
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