![]() September, October, and November deliver the best bang for your buck because demand drops off when the summer unofficially ends. "You never want to get them around the holidays," Rorapaugh warns. When can you score the best deals?The months when crabs are fullest also happens to be a great time to get a great price. "When you think of Maryland crab, you have a lot of that mustard and the different colors that are in there and it just has character to it and has more of a flavor to it." "The southern crabs don't really have to go through that."īy comparison, he says crabs from southerly waters can be bland. "Our crab goes through a transition where it has to protect itself during the cold months, so it, in a sense, fattens up to protect itself," he says. Rorapaugh agrees that blue crabs in this region have a distinct flavor caused by seasonal temperature changes. Still, many crustacean connoisseurs remain fiercely loyal to the Chesapeake blue crab. What's the big deal about Chesapeake Bay crabs?Blue crabs are not exclusive to the Bay-they can be found in brackish estuaries along the East Coast through the Gulf of Mexico and as far south as Uruguay. Blue crabs can be harvested and sold all year round, but they come from different waters. Unlike some crab houses, Ivy City buys and serves exclusively Maryland crabs. He oversees all the crab purchasing for the tavern and the market, and they go through about 25 bushels per week. They're big and plump and fatty," says Jay Caputo, the executive chef at Ivy City Smokehouse. "I personally believe that mid-August through September is the best time for crabs. While most consumers start getting excited about crabs as soon as Memorial Day rolls around, it's actually better to wait until late summer or early fall to indulge. ![]() That's what everybody looks for," Rorapaugh says. "As you get into the later months, September, even as far as October, you have really hard crabs and you have very full crabs. "As you get further away from that cycle of life, you get crabs that are fuller."Īs a result, the early months of crab season are more of a gamble when it comes to how heavy or full a crab is as they may be caught just after a molt. "Crabs can grow up to 30% in size per shed," he says. John Rorapaugh, the Sustainable Director at ProFish, explains that crabs that have just molted aren't filling out their shell as much as those that have been growing for weeks. Once a crab sheds its shell, it begins the process of hardening again. This variance is a result of the crab's life cycle, which revolves around molting, or shedding its shell as it grows (hence soft shell crabs). However, the quantity and quality of product fluctuates significantly during this 10-month window. When is crab season in the Chesapeake Bay region?Legally speaking, crab season this year runs from March 17 to November 30 in Virginia and April 1 to December 15 in Maryland. And by hammers we mean wooden mallets-for cracking crabs, of course!Ĭrab season is moving full steam ahead, so we asked a few local experts to answer all of our burning questions about the beloved blue crab. A 1997 stock assessment concluded that Chesapeake Bay blue crab stocks were fully exploited but in no current danger of recruitment overfishingįisheries management blue crab Chesapeake Bay.Summer in the mid-Atlantic means one thing for seafood fans: hammer time. An historical perspective should be taken in the interpretation of the recent decline in reported harvests. Management measures in the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fisheries have included size and life stage, season, and gear limitations, as well as entry restrictions. Changes in fishing effort and power, environmental conditions, ecological interactions and market forces have been hypothesized as causative factors. blue crab fisheries have undergone periods of low abundance. Other major gears include the trotline, crab scrape and crab dredge. Since the 1950s, crab pots have accounted for the largest proportion of reported landings. There is also a substantial recreational (casual) fishery for blue crabs. The commercial fishery has a hard crab component and a soft crab (recently molted) fishery. The United States blue crab fishery is made up of hundreds to thousands of small-scale fishermen. harvest of blue crabs, but less than 50% over the last two decades. Until about 1950, Chesapeake Bay accounted for over 75% of the total reported U.S. From 1990 to 1994, reported landings averaged more than 96 million kg per year, with a reported dockside value of more than $200 million. Major blue crab fisheries have existed on the Atlantic coast of the United States for at least 100 years, and on the Gulf of Mexico coast for more than 50 years. The history of Chesapeake Bay's blue crab (Callinectes sapidus): fisheries and management.
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