The Face-Hugging Blue Crab Episode

These crustaceans are the most-consumed type of crab in the U.S., which is the top crab-consuming country in the world. Anney and Lauren explore the history and, honestly, just very strange science of blue crabs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Saber Protection of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam, and today
we're talking about blue crabs and I'm unreasonably excited about it.
I'm so excited. They are such weird little buddies. Yes, yes,
I believe it was last Friday when we were talking

(00:30):
about next topics and you said, okay, what about crabs
And I was doing like preliminary research, and I immediately
was very, very very excited about the prospect of you
explaining these animals to me because they're weird. They're so strange.

(00:51):
I was reading things like this can't be. This certainly
is not how a living creature works. Nobody is. Nope,
it certainly as folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it is
a compliment to our recent Old Bay episode, which, by
the way, I really appreciate the handful of listeners who

(01:12):
reached out to us and said they would send Old
Bay because I complain that I couldn't get my hands
in that episode. Laura knows that I hilariously discovered. Yeah
there was the back. Yeah, I I we we mentioned
this in udnesdays episode. But but right, I just get
this text out of nowhere. That's like just a photograph

(01:34):
of Annie holding Old Bay and going like, well if
I had some after all, which is a wonderful surprise,
but also kind of embarrassing because I have been looking
for it for about a year. So this episode you
can see related episodes like Oysters and Lobster. Also, I

(01:56):
could talk more about the two thousand nine horror movie
The Bay. I suppose you always could. I always could, because,
as I mentioned in the Old Bay episode, the horror
starts in that movie with a crab, a blue crab
eating contest. Okay, well I found it highly unsettling. I

(02:18):
didn't say this in the last one, but that movie
um started as a documentary but really, yes, director, yes,
but the director decided more people would watch it if
you made it into a horror movie. This is fascinating.
That is so wonderful. It's a wonderful and disturbing. Uh yeah,

(02:42):
but it's about I don't know if anybody remembers, and
I'm sorry I keep parking on these horror movies, like
hardly anyone seen. But it's about if you remember the
isopod that would eat the fish's tongue and become its tongue.
I I do not remember that, but cool that exists
and is horrifying. Yeah, no, that's what I Marine life

(03:06):
is terrifying, completely weird, so divergent from so many things
that we have on land. I get into that in
a minute. Here. Uh it's a whole bunch, it is,
it is and uh yeah that that whole thing was
a very disturbing incident in my life when I saw

(03:26):
that picture of the isopod. But that's anyway, that's what
that movie is about. Um. On a more positive side,
my grandparents, I think I've mentioned they lived on the
Gulf of Mexico and in the summer we would often
go stay with them for a couple of weeks or so,

(03:46):
and they loved crab. They we would go crabbing with them,
and they had like they loved crab West Indies, which
I'm going to talk about a little bit, crab Imperial.
They added a ton of it there. That's what they
said made their gumbo special. Was Yes, um, crab cakes,
crab claws. Sometimes we just catched them fresh and steam

(04:10):
them and serve them with butter. I have many fond
memories of watching my dad struggle with crabs getting caught
in nets like in that mean child way of like
watching your dad struggle or something. Uh yeah, and yeah,
gone through and throwing back. The young crabs are the
pregnant ones. And that's one of the last things me
and my dad talked about what before he died, was

(04:31):
he he was not from there, so he didn't have
any experience crabbing like my mom did all the stuff.
She introduced him to that, and she introduced him to
this thing, which is one of the reasons I'm very
excited to talk about crab, which is called crab do
you believe and how that whole experience was kind of

(04:52):
a wonderful disaster for Yes, but more on that later.
More on that later. Now that I'm an adult, I
have I've had my own struggles catching the crabs and
crab traps, and family tradition continues. Yes, it does, Yes,
the struggling with the crabs. And I will say, like,

(05:14):
if you have not seen a crab swim, I have,
and it is frightening quickly, and they m yeah, I
you know, they're very pointy, they come, they come with
little pincers. Yes, they blue crabs are particularly quite fast.
Oh yeah. And then with a burrow under the sand

(05:35):
and you're just walking along and then painture oh crabs,
And I remember being a kid and finding like the
artifacts of their shells. Yeah. Um, yeah, I have very
little experience with blue crab. Um. Of course, I've probably

(05:57):
eaten it any number of times in crab cakes or
something like that. But but yeah, I've never really hung
out places where that's the specialty. Um, So I've never
been crabbing. I I don't. I don't think i've met one,
you know. Um. But the the type of crab that
I'm familiar with from my childhood is stone crab, which

(06:20):
which a listener wrote in about and that type of
crab that um is farmed in Florida or caught in
Florida at any rate. And um, my dad, working in
the restaurant industry, once a year it was this very
special occasion, would get a like hall of stone crab
claws and we would spend like a big family day
with a bunch of cousins, um steaming and eating stone crab.

(06:43):
And they are so succulent and delicious and oh that
sounds very yes, it's it's it's pretty amazing. Um. But yeah, no,
they are very strange creatures. Uh, like most aquatic things.
I and I think about this sort of thing every

(07:05):
day when I because I have I have an aquarium.
As I've mentioned before, I actually aquarium update, y'all. I
just got vertebrates for the first time. But I have
I I now have five red eye tetra. They're they're
hanging out doing fish stuff. I don't know menacing name.

(07:27):
I gotta say. They're like an inch long. They're not
very many, don't. I mean, they do look at you.
They do look at you. But their red eyes with
their their eyes themselves aren't red, but they have a
little ring around them, kind of like a little spot

(07:50):
that that kind of glows red, the way that neon
tetra have like a little stripe. It's the same sort
of thing. I appreciate. This is a this is a
thing I do all the time. I appreciate when someone's
talking about something and I have really no clue what
they're talking about, but I'm like, uh, huh, stripe on
the tetra. I wasn't aware of tetra as a fish,

(08:13):
all right. Neon tetra are are quite popular within the
aquarium hobby. Um, you've probably seen them before, even if
you're unaware they're They're just these very small, like a
half inch to an inch silvery bluish fish, especially under
aquarium light, which usually has some UV in it um,
with a little red to pink to like neon pink

(08:36):
stripe down along the side of their bodies. So okay,
and these red eye tetra they're getting along with the snails.
They are they are. I actually, oh, I bought them
specifically at this juncture because I had these invader snails
that but their their life cycle is very much quicker
then my uh Pomasia BRIGESSI a uh brid jessee I sorry,

(09:01):
uh snails. It's just like a common river snail. And
they reproduced so fast and so all of a sudden,
I thought I had one snail, and then I had
like sixty snails, and I realized that it was like
going to approach critical mass um. So I was like, Okay,
let's introduce something that might actually eat these snail spawn.

(09:26):
It's kind of messed up. I appreciate the need for it.
You're you're creating an ecosystem when you have an aquarium, Lauren,
you know you do do um. I think it's working.

(09:47):
I think it's working, so that's great. H They don't
seem to be bothering my shrimp though, so that's good too.
Got shrimp in there's why Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've
got some hold on it's the one that I don't
think it is. And tomorrow is a liquor, Amano is
a shrimp. There you go, there you savor slogan. We

(10:07):
need to incorporate that. Jeez. Yeah, that's an embarrassing mistake
to make, by the way. At I can see that.
I can see that. They're like, I'm looking for some
tomorrow and they're like, you're in the wrong place, ma'am

(10:28):
wrong store. Well, I'm glad to hear you're creating an ecosystem,
you know. I'm hoping I'm hoping that I am and
not just a twenty gallon disaster. Twenty gallon disaster that
needs to be the name of something. I'm gonna have

(10:53):
a plaque, mad, It's going to be great. Um. I
do want to say I have recently kind of accidentally
started rewatching SpongeBob oh yeah, which has been an absolute delight.
But there are a lot of plot points of Mr Crabs,
who is my favorite character multi snails similar similar to

(11:16):
what your SpongeBob has. Some I mean, I'm sure they
take artistic license, but there some they keep some real
world things in there. Okay, that sounds very upseting and cool.
Some of it is. But I suppose we should get

(11:38):
to our questions. I suppose we should. We were talking.
We were talking about blue crabs. Yes, blue crabs. What
are they? Well, Uh, okay, crustaceans in general are the delicious, scuttling,
gigantic insects of the seat. It's a lot of a

(12:04):
lot of things happening in that very short sentence. Oh,
there's a lot going on with crustaceans, that's fair to see. Uh,
they're not all gigantic, but um, like topside in the
air where we mostly live, physics really puts quite a

(12:26):
hamper on the size of of anything with an exo skeleton.
That is, a creatures with their skeletal uh support structure
on the outside of their bodies rather than on the
inside like we have. Um. You know, exo skeletons can
be heavy and can pretty quickly grow to the size
will where they will impede movement, But underwater it's not
so much of a burden. That said, blue crabs are

(12:48):
one of the things that, yeah, like aren't that big. Um,
let's describe them first and then I'll get to their size.
So um. So, crabs in general are animals that develop
a hard body and usually ten legs, five pairs of
legs with various functions. Um. Blue crabs have bodies shaped

(13:09):
sort of sort of like an empanada or like a
cal zone. Um that comes to like really extreme points
at at at the two point e bits. Okay, so
they're like sort of like flat and kind of half
moon shaped, but with a with drawn out points at
those two sides of that moon. Okay, spiky thing yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah. Um. And then they've got this

(13:30):
series of eighteen we little spikes or or ridges along
the front side or face side of their bodies that
that make them look just like we little danger pies. Yeah,
there's somehow both cute and intimidating. It's it's a difficult
intersection to manage, but they seem to be there. I

(13:54):
find most crabs very menacing looking in in in the
exact way that I do not find most spiders. Because
most spiders are so tiny, They're like so small and
some of them are fuzzy, and I think that's great,
but like you make it as big as your palm
or bigger, and I'm suddenly like no, please, no, please

(14:20):
to be over there now. I do not want um
but delicious, so you know anyway, blue crabs can grow
up to about nine inches across that that that half
moon shape about, and can weigh up to a third
of a pound that's about a hundred and fifty grams.
Females are a little bit smaller than males um if

(14:42):
left their own devices, they live about three or four years,
and those shells on the top are sort of bluish
olive gray green and then creamy white on the bottom
with a pretty blue, like bright blue coloration on their
legs and especially the the claws, and I'm a little
bit on their underbelly. Males might have a little bit

(15:04):
of orange coloration on their joints and claws. Mature females
claws are tipped in red. Their taxonomical name is Calinicus cepidis,
which apparently translates to something like beautiful savory swimmer. That's
such a I love that it's one of those things,
though it's like very complimentary, but also like, oh, that

(15:26):
means you're gonna try to eat me. Yeah, yeah, Like
what a pretty thing for me to consume, right, all right,
that's on the nose, thanks buddies. Ha um. And yeah,
they are strong swimmers because their rear most set of
legs are these like larger flat paddle shaped things. Um.

(15:49):
Then they've got three pairs of smaller pointed walking legs,
and then these larger snippy front claws. On the undersides
of their bodies. They have a little segmented belly plate
called an apron. And this is one of the ways
that you can tell male versus female crabs. And I'm
just going to quote, um noah, the National Ocean a

(16:10):
Graphic and Aerospace Administration. I think I just pulled that
out of my butt, so who knows, um quote. In
the Chesapeake Bay, people often refer to males aprons as
looking like the Washington Monument, while females aprons look like
the Capital Dome. So there's just this blue coloration on

(16:30):
their bellies. Uh. And it's kind of like like spire
shaped or pointed on males, and it's kind of dome
shaped with a little spike on the top on females,
So it's pretty But that just really cracked me up.
That is pretty fantastic. That is you know what, if
I next time I go crabbing, I'll see if I

(16:51):
notice this. Yeah, yeah, that's how you can tell um
when you when you cook blue crab hole in their shell,
those shells will turn red. And this happens because the
same pigment molecules in a crabs shell that um bind
to proteins there and and thus become all of colored

(17:14):
while it's alive. When you cook the shell, um, the
proteins in the shell will cross link with each other
and thus release these pigment molecules, which turn red when
they're free of those proteins. Weird and interesting. Yes, I
think that's a great description for crabs and overall absolutely

(17:35):
heck um. Their meat, meanwhile, is white to kind of
brown tinted with a with a rich, sweet, slightly nutty
flavor and a little bit of a salty hint in there.
Delicious um. Blue crabs are native to temperate regions of
the Atlantic north from Nova Scotia all the way south
to Argentina up into the Gulf of Mexico, but they

(17:58):
are particularly prolific in Chesapeake Bay. They've also been introduced
on purpose and accidentally in temperate oceans and seas in
Europe and North Asia, and they're a pretty important part
of the food chain everywhere they hang out um. They
are omnivores and will eat pretty much anything they can find,
catch or pry open um. They're even considered a pest

(18:20):
in some environments because like if they get into your farms,
like nice, well laid out, safe, cultured clam beds, they
can eat like five hundred and seventy five clams in
a day. Oh my gosh. And that is a weirdly
specific statistic that I firmly believe some poor clam farber

(18:42):
out there was like really five seventy five really? Yeah,
it's like a spiteful like, oh, I'm going to get
an exact number. I'm gonna know the number, crappy bastard. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's significant. I couldn't eat clams in

(19:04):
a day. I mean I might be able to, but
I don't want to know. It sounds terrible. Gosh. It's
like the jaws of crabs, like the rogue crab. Yeah,
that is getting revenge for his previous generation death. That's

(19:25):
one of my favorite things about Jaws is that it's
implied that there's some kind of generational intergenerational Yeah, yeah,
that's what's going on. That's what I think. Oh gosh,
you know ocean beef. It's uh, it's very serious, very serious. Indeed.
More crab facts. Blue crabs, like other crustaceans, have to

(19:47):
molt that hard shell as they grow too large for it,
and this naturally happens in the spring, sometimes a few
times a year, when the water's warm up and the
crabs become more active after being bunker down for the
winter kind of buried themselves in mutter sand depending on
the temperature of the of the water where they are
um their shell will first loosen and and the new

(20:09):
still soft shell will develop underneath. At this stage they
are called peelers, and then eventually they fully wriggle out
of their old shell and emerge soft and these are
called soft shell crabs and are considered a particular delicacy.
They can be eaten whole, no no cracking and picking necessary,
which is how you normally have to get a crab meat.

(20:29):
They do go through, yes, several molds over the course
of their lives as they hatch as larva and then
metamorphos size twice um and then grow to their full
adult size, and during one of these stages they acent
definitely look like face huggers. Uh, that is just what
they look like. It's quite upsetting. I it's fine, everything's
fine here. I just have a lot of very formative

(20:54):
memories from like half life an Alien, so I am
particularly keyed into this imagery. Yeah, no, I hear you,
I hear you. Yeah. I just recently told the story
of my very long struggle to watch Alien because we
have aliens. But in our office, maybe even before I

(21:16):
got the courage to watch Alien, there was a face hugger.
There is like a like a like a stuffed toy
puppet kind of kind of buddy. Yeah. Yeah, but it
was on the ceiling and I didn't realize it was
there until, you know, maybe a year in and then
I look up one day and it's just waiting for you.
You know, in space, they can't hear you scream. In

(21:37):
the office they can. So I'm on the same page. Ving.
Oh no, oh, that's so funny. I'm sorry. I'm actually
going to the office for the first time in over
a year tomorrow, and I can see if it's still there,

(21:58):
you know, I bet it is. I bet it. I
don't remember, I don't I don't have like a mental
eye on it right now. Um, I've only been a
couple of times. But anyway, I've not actually eaten soft
shelled crab. I see it on menus everywhere around Atlanta,
and I've just never known what to expect from the texture,
and it's usually kind of expensive, so I've just avoided
it in favor of better known proteins. But apparently they

(22:21):
are tender and juicy and sweet with a sort of
like burst of brine when you bite into them. Um.
They can be served steamed or sauteed or deep fried
or grilled this whole. Yeah, Yeah, I've had I've had
him a couple of times. They're They're delicious. There's that
kind of like brain disconnect, at least for me, where

(22:41):
you think there's gonna be this harder texture and then
it's not there. So uh, it's a kind of exciting experience,
almost cool, very very good. Yeah. I don't know what
my hold up is, because if if a shrimp is
um is fried or sauteed and in the right way.
I'll eat the whole shell. I'm like, not really that

(23:04):
bothered by kitan, So I don't know anyway, Okay, okay, homework, homework.
The next time I see it on the menu, I'm
gonna try it. Um. The soft shell stage is also
when female crabs can mate um and their their their
mates will carry them around until their new shell hardens

(23:26):
up um, which occurs over like less over the course
of less than a day apparently. So this is a
very small time frame. Yeah, weird, so weird. Okay. Um.
A female crab will mate only once in her life,
but will produce a million to eight million eggs. That's

(23:49):
a lot of eggs. Oh my god. I guess about
half of which are expected to survive. But depending on
the area that you're in, as few as like one
in a million might survive to adulthood. I saw some
I saw regarding blue crab reproduction. You guys, I read

(24:09):
a lot about it, considering that we're a food show,
because I was just trying to get a grip on it,
and I kept seeing different statistics and different explanations, and
so I'm not sure if it's just different in different
areas or if like some sources were just wrong, I
couldn't really get a very clear handle on it. We
will clearly have to talk to some crab scientists at

(24:30):
some point in the future. Definitely, Um, that should be
your subject line, Lauren, regarding blue crab reproduction. You know,
I feel like any crab scientists would be glad to
get that subject line. There's a definite hesitation when you

(24:52):
said glad, but I think it's worth the effort. Did
are you will be marked a spam? That's my prediction.
You know, sometimes we all sometimes we all get marked
a spam. Uh um. When when she first lays these eggs,

(25:13):
they will be bright orange um and in this mass
or sponge kind of beneath her her apron um, and
then they'll start to become brown as they develop into larva.
She can also carry if she if she sheds and
then mates, she can carry that sperm around for like
a year or more if she hasn't produced her eggs yet.

(25:34):
This is fairly common from what I understand, in a
lot of oceanic species. It's certainly common for some of
the shrimp that I've kept. I read in one source
that juvenile females will produce eggs as well, but won't mate.
But that just sounds wrong to me. But I don't know.
Crabs are weird. I don't know what they're up to. Um,

(25:55):
the eggs are eaten as row, especially in the delicacy
she crabs soup. Yeah, yeah, which I've had that before,
I will say. As a kid, one of the things
that stands out to me in my memories of crabbing
was that that orange, spongy mass really freaked me out.
Oh that's fair. It looks weird. I know, I know,

(26:18):
I'm using the word weird a lot, but like, I
I'm not sure how like, without getting into like love
crafty and language, I'm like, not entirely sure what better
descriptor to use. It's just heack and strange. It is
compared to the heck and strangeness that is human bodies. Yeah,
I mean, it's all pretty weird out there for sure.
Oh my, oh jeez. Do you ever think about the

(26:40):
fact that there's a skeleton in New right now? Well,
I'm thinking about it now. Sorry, I think about that sometimes.
I'm like, geez, when Savor goes existential. It was the

(27:04):
Blue Crab episode. Who knew, but we should have guessed
we should have other crab terminology. Busters are crabs that
are just starting to malt. That that that are that
are sloughing off their peeler stage. Jimmy's are adult males,

(27:26):
suits are adult females, Sally's or she crabs are immature females,
and sponges are females carrying eggs. Wow. Wow, all right,
you know, very important to know the differences, and so
of course terminology has developed around them. Absolutely um sponge
Seinfeld reference. Okay, well what about the nutrition, Lauren? Uh, well,

(27:55):
crab is pretty good for you, low in fats, high
in protein and minerals and a few vitamins. Also has
some salt. Of course, it really depends on how you
cook and serve them, because if you're you know, deep
frying a soft shell crab, or if you're just like
kind of coating the meat and butter before you eat it, like,
that's going to have an impact on the nutritional factor there. Yeah,

(28:19):
but the meat itself will will help fill you up
and keep you going. Yes, yes, yes, very deliciously in
my case. Yeah, yeah, we do have some numbers for you, Well,
we do. Blue crab is the most harvested and most
consumed type of crab in the United States. Yes, and
it is the Chesapeake Bay's most valuable commercial resource. In

(28:43):
two thousand, Maryland and Virginia harvested fifty point nine million pounds,
and that was a low harvest year. Maryland has a
true Blue certification for restaurants, indicating that the crab meat
served there is from Maryland. Um. That's what it's supposed
to indicate. Thousands of fishers. Fisher people work in the

(29:05):
industry there, Yeah, um. Chesapeake Bay is our nation's largest
estuary system, meaning like rivers into ocean outlet, it sustaining
over thirty six hundred species of animals and plants. Crabbing
season in the bay is April one through December. An

(29:25):
estimated ten tot of blue crab imported to the United
States is the result of pirate fishing. Pirate fishing. Yes, Yes,
a lot of information out there on that if if
you should like to seek it out. According to data
from the nineties, the US is the top crab consuming
country in the world, with annual harvest ranging from two

(29:47):
fifty million to three hundred and fifty million pounds of
quote whole crabs amounting to eighty million dollars. Half of
that harvest was blue crab, and half of that came
from the Chesapeake Bay. Uh. The Gulf of Mexico is
also an important producer. Louisiana itself fishers their harvest about
a quarter of the US blue crab catch um. The

(30:10):
largest blue crab on record from Chesapeak, though, was one
point one pounds and ten point seven two inches across.
That's about four And it's not a plaque, isn't it.
They got it like bronzed or something. Gosh, I don't know,
but if they did, that's amazing. I'm pretty sure it's like,

(30:33):
that's so gnarly. I love it. I could be wrong.
There's definitely a big one that is on like I, oh,
you know, I haven't. I haven't thought about plating enough,

(30:55):
like like metal plating, not dish plating enough seafood. I guests, true, Lauren,
I've often thought that about you. He doesn't think about
metal blading sea food enough. I'm glad we could confront
this finally, finally talk about it. I thank you for
thank you for bringing me to this very complex intervention. Annie. Yes,

(31:19):
a couple of years as I'm making, but we finally arrived.
Oh something else I love. On Labor Day weekend in Chrisfield, Maryland,
the town holds the annual National Hard Crab Derby and Fair,
and it sounds excellent. It sounds like a delight. There
are crab races, there's cooking contest, a picking contest, and

(31:42):
of course lots of food. But the crab race is
what really draws my attention because I feel like crabs
aren't going to race, They're going to do whatever they
want exactly, like perhaps pinch you when you tried to you. Yeah,
that sounds like it's probably more or less. The point

(32:05):
of yeah, of the of the race is that it's
just gonna be. It's going to be real silly m
that's kind of In a recent Dungeons and Dragon session,
I had all of you players, including Lauren, there was
a lizard race. I won't say you cheated, but you
kind of gained the system. Well, you're on your lizard.

(32:26):
You didn't tell us that we couldn't place bets on
every lizard. I didn't, and therefore, clearly when something you're correct. Also,
crabs do now always remind me of a of our
very first D and d session altogether. Um, we're in

(32:50):
One of our group members who was playing a shape shifter.
She we we needed to solve this puzzle where we
needed to get to a place that was inaccessible to us,
and she was like, what if I turned into a
crab and Lauren's tie fling character throws the crab? And
I was like, Okay, do I need to roll to

(33:12):
throw the crab? And yep, and I did and it succeeded.
It did succeed. That was like my second session I've
ever played, And that was one of the first instances
where I was like, oh, this is what this can be,
this is how it can go. Yep, you can throw
a crab like a frisbee. Yep. O cool. It was just, yeah,

(33:39):
one of those moments of complete surreality, surreality yeah, where
I was just like, welle, nope, this is this is
what we're doing today, this is what we're using our
fantasy universe in order to do. And it was Lovely
who did succeed Crab helped us out. She did, Yes,

(34:03):
we do have a lot of strange Crabby history to
go over with you. Oh gosh, we do. But first
we've got a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. So

(34:26):
crabs in general have evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
I couldn't find too much about the specific evolution of
blue crab, but researchers seemed to believe it evolved in
Atlantic waters. And I did see one number that was
saying like around ninety million years ago, but I really
couldn't confirm it specifically, old old. They've been around for

(34:50):
a minute, they have, they have um. Indigenous peoples along
the Atlantic coast have had a long history of eating crab,
and pretty much as soon as the columnist arrived to
North America, they were locally catching and eating blue crabs,
sometimes using them as bait wind fishing, kind of like oysters.

(35:11):
They were so plentiful they were sometimes viewed as a nuisance,
as a pest. Before ice and transportation improvements, crabs. Blue
crabs are really hard to preserve, so they weren't commercially
cultivated in the early days. The crab scrape was developed
in eight seventy, making catching crabs in large quantities easier

(35:34):
um and the crabs scrape as a is a type
of catch equipment that consists of a long bar that
you drag along the sea floor behind your boat with
a bag attached that will collect any crabs that happened
to be hanging out there on the sea floor. Um.
From what I've read, scraping is mostly used to catch

(35:55):
soft shell crabs and peelers um, which would both be
kind of hiding in the due to their vulnerability during
the malting process. And I also read that this is
particularly common in Chesapeake in the shallows around Smith Island.
And that means very little to me, but so many
places set it emphatically that I decided to report it

(36:16):
to you. Yes, I'm sure our listeners from Maryland will confirm, yes, yes.
Soft shelled crab was regarded as a delicacy in the
Chesapeake Bay area by eighteen eighty, and that same year
the first commercial blue crab fishery began operating in the region.
The first licenses for Chesapeake Bay blue crab harvesting or

(36:39):
given out in an eighteen Some sources indicate saft shell
crabs were first marketed in the US in eighteen seventy three,
and hard blue crabs in eighteen seventy eight, which I
find very interesting, you know, not having not having to
crack open a crab shell. And that's true. Pick out

(37:00):
the meat is very appealing, No pun intended, that's true. Uh.
These crabs were shipped to cities like New York and Philadelphia,
which led to an increase in demand. From nine hundred,
the market grew from four million kilograms to nine million kilograms,
helped along by innovations around ice and transport. Scientists and

(37:23):
world's leading crab expert and crab taxonomist, Mary Jane Rathven
described this species of cab in eight nine six, and
I researched your story because that title piqued my interests. Yes,
is very, very fascinating. Um. It was around this time

(37:44):
the first blue cab fisheries were established on the Atlantic coast.
It would be fifty years later before they popped up
on the Gulf of Mexico, or before there are records
of them on the Gulf of Mexico. So let us
talk about crab jubilee, which is one of the main
reasons I want to talk. Yes, I mean anything with

(38:07):
the word jubilee, and it is basically gonna be great
what we hope, Yes, one would hope. And I think this,
I think this lives up to it. No commentary about
the nineties X Men cartoon necessary, Yes, keep your emails please,
or if you just want to talk about it, we're

(38:28):
probably into that, but definitely, but no negative opinions about
Jubilee here. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Um so okay.
These Jubilees were often and are often announced with hopeful
folks like shouting out their window jubilee. In the past,
people perhaps shouted this from their cars. Are called friends

(38:50):
and uttered that one word jubilee, and said friend would
dash from the house and there pajamas leaving the phone
swinging on the cord. I know it's sounds like I'm
being dramatic. These are accounts that I read written account
you can find online. So big crowds would show up
to these things and do and they are celebratory, competitive events.

(39:11):
If you're asking yourself, well, what is a do you believe? Well,
in this context, it's a high density, high quantity swarming
of shrimp, flounder and other fish, eels and crabs, typically
blue crabs in usually shallow waters. And I'll get into
my kind of skeptical tone in a minute, because I

(39:32):
got some mixed information here. Um and people would just
get buckets and nets and catch so much seafood, like
five hundred flounder for one person. This is a still
relatively mysterious phenomenon, and it was first recorded in the
Mobile area of Alabama in eighteen sixty and first named

(39:53):
in nineteen twelve. Mobile Bay is the only place where
it regularly takes place, and po possibly also somewhere in Japan.
I couldn't really find anything about it, but some people
mentioned it in passing, but it does occur in waters
near Mobile Bay as well. These jubilees typically take place
in summer in the early morning before sunrise. The day

(40:15):
before is usually cloudy and relatively calm, with a rising tide.
And if you're listening to this and you're thinking this
sounds like very much Southern like if a rattlesnake crosses
the room and the street p M and there's a
storm of ruin, that's what I thought too. But scientists
have looked into it um they think that why this
happens is due to a lack of oxygen and deeper

(40:36):
waters that forces bottom dwelling fish and crustaceans up to
the surface and droves. This lack of oxygen is caused
by a couple of factors, like pockets of salinity stratification,
meaning that a kind of layering takes place in the water,
with a salty, heavier gulf water on the bottom and
lighter river water on top. These pockets, when their stagnant,

(40:58):
allow for a build up a vegetation and plant matter
that provides food for microorganisms. When the water is stagnant
and warm, when it's calm and there's like a low breeze,
as I was saying, it leads to an explosion of
micro organisms that consume even more oxygen. Yes, so with
a rising tide and a gentle easterly wind, the oxygen

(41:19):
starved bottom dwelling creatures behave oddly and are largely rendered
unable to swim. When the sun rises, the jubilee usually ends,
since photosynthesis is activated with plants reoxygen eating the water.
Depending on the creature that turn up, qualifiers like flounder
jubilee are crowd jubilee are added to the name huh

(41:44):
yeah um from Southern living quote. Flounders, some as big
as hub caps and in numbers beyond the counting, piled
up like dinner plates in the shallows, and on the
sand itself, flopping, wriggling, so many that you could gig
three at a time. Eels tangled into a twisted mass
so thick that a man could not plant his feet

(42:04):
to scoop them up in a five gallon bucket. Catfish,
thousands of them seemed to be struggling, not to stay
in the water but escape it, only to be gathered
up by old women and laughing children with nets or
even pots and pants. There were shrimp, rays and other
things that dwell on the bottom, but it was the crabs.
Gardener who was a person this author was interviewing, would

(42:27):
never forget quote in article quote. All of them were
just fighting to get out of that bad water. On
the sea wall, the crabs were crawling over each other.
You could see them pile up like they were trying
to climb that wall. I thought it was the judgment, Yes,
crab judgment. I don't want to be a part of that. Yes.

(42:51):
On top of that, the eels slither. They often slither
onto the shore and bury their head into the sand
and flail about. And this is sometimes described as a
madus ahead. I'm telling you, lauren Um. People in the
area say even though it happens semi regularly. It's like
it's almost like winning the seafood lottery, that you could

(43:12):
go there and never see it. Um. And so yes,
I did call my mom because she's been to a
few uh and asked her what her experience was. And
according to her, she would go into the Gulf of Mexico,
so not on shore, UM, and they would take her
and her family would take these buckets and it would

(43:34):
be mid mid day or early kind of early afternoon,
I guess, and about six ft under would just be
crabs swimming, crabs and crabs and crabs. And she said, um,
they would get like three industrial buckets full of crabs
just like just just scoop them up, just yeah. And

(43:56):
that was they would just stop there because they didn't
need anymore, but they could have kept. Yeah. She also
explained to me in detail how to clean a crab,
and from this she also told me a story about
so recently me and my coast on Sminty had a
kind of a disastrous crabbing experience. Um, and we were

(44:18):
cleaning the crab and we were like do we eat
this part? And it's kind of these like weird finger
looking things inside of it, white finger looking things. Um. Okay.
According to my mom, she knew a guy when she
was a kid, like I want, a friend of her dad's,
and he said, if you eat those things, you'll be
dead by morning, which I think it was an exaggeration,

(44:41):
but when she said that, oh god, I'm so glad
we didn't eat those gosh. I think there's gills. Okay,
talking about the gills, but I don't know. I didn't
learn that much about interior crab anatomy. I unfortunately cannot
help you here. Oh no, Lauren, I'm counting on you

(45:04):
my only hope. No, there is another's Google. I suppose,
I suppose all right, Well that's that is Jubilee. Um.
The internet doesn't seem to know much about it. There's
like two sources that had a lot of stuff, but

(45:26):
otherwise it seems kind of a phenomenon too many people
know about. So if you've been to one, yeah, please
please please share. Um. I did want to put in
um that. I also read an account of how to
clean crab from an article in National Geographic by one

(45:47):
Jasmine Wiggins, and it made me laugh out loud, um
because she she was saying that she had been in
the seafood shop and UM and like clearly didn't know
what she was doing. And so so the man behind
the cash register was like, here, I'll show you how

(46:09):
to clean the crabs. And he says, first you cut
the face, and and her and her responses, cut the face,
cut the face. I certainly could not cut the face
of anything. Yeah, someone in her party eventually cut the face.
But scenarily, you know, you know, it's it's serious business

(46:36):
getting into UM an exo skeleton, that's But at any rate,
UH factory timeline UM in Maryland officially eliminated commercial winter
harvest of blue crab, although enforcement of those rules was sporadic.

(46:57):
From what I read by those who were paying attention
were sounding the alarm about the decline of Chesapeake Bay's
blue crab population, predicting its decimation a study predicted the
same thing. In response, the governors of Virginia and Maryland
came together to come up with a way to combat
this decline, agreeing on things like increasing size limits UM,

(47:19):
banning taking of sponge crabs of pregnant crabs, shortening the
dredging season, and banning the harvesting of green crabs. Or
young crabs. However, none of these policies were acted. A
study by the Academy of Natural Sciences found a decrease
in the number of blue crabs available for harvest, so

(47:40):
numbers going down. Crab cakes separate episode, but according to
several sources, the first written Maryland crab cake recipe made
with the crab appeared in the nine New York's Worldfare
cookbook by Crosby Gauge. A recipe for crab imperial also
appeared in this cookbook. Um the first recipes for that

(48:03):
are thought to have appeared in the late nineteenth century. However,
others point to an earlier recipe for crab cakes published
in in eight cookbook by Thomas J. Murray called Cookery
with a Shafing Dish. Here's the taste of that recipe.
The meat from the hard shell crabs, after boiling, may
be made into little cakes, held together with a yolk

(48:23):
of an egg, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then
cooked in the shafing dish with a small amount of
butter or oil. A similar recipe, recommended for breakfast, was
published in eight and Mrs Charles Gibbons Maryland and Virginia cookbook.
The storians think indigenous people's in the Chesapeak Bay area
may have eaten a form of crab cake as well.

(48:45):
The crab pot was invented in the nineteen thirties. This
was a real game changer because it required less work
and was fairly inexpensive, allowing for more folks to enter
the industry. And this is not a pot in which
you cook crabs, but another type of trap for crabs. UM.
It's basically a wire cage with funnel shaped openings or

(49:06):
one way gates leading into the trap. Like you put
bait in a little lore box fixed in the pot,
and then curious crabs can crawl in, but they can't
crawl back out. UM. And once you place that, you
want to just let it sit for a few hours. UM.
So you can drop a crab pot like on your
way out to see and then pick it up when
you come back in. So it's yeah, it's pretty convenient, UM.

(49:27):
Not so labor intensive. UM. Sometimes inconvenient if you like
forget them or lose track of where they are. UM. Today,
the purposeful removal of long forgotten crab pots generates tens
of millions of dollars a year. I believe it. So
this is how I catch grabs in my limited experience.

(49:48):
And uh, me and a friend we were trying to
set it up and failing miserably, and somebody came up
on the other dock and was telling us how to
do it, and we just the crabs kept getting away
and they kept having success, like every day we see
them flowing up, crabs and crabs um. And he told
us that they loved chicken, and we did put chicken

(50:10):
in there, and that seems to be the case because
we did end up catching five crabs. Wow, okay, alright, cool,
but yeah, we never really figured out this seemingly easy,
so simple, it was industry changing trap. Yeah, to the
point that a friend of mine was like, what if
we just get that one because you can see like

(50:30):
booie's of them floating. We can't do that to somebody, No,
it would be pretty mean. Yes, yes, West Indies salad,
which is sort of this simple vinegare lemoni blue crab salad,
is thought to have been popularized in by restaurateur Bill
Bailey out of Mobile, Alabama. My mom loves this. This

(50:52):
is like the first Christmas I spent with my ex
boyfriend and not her. I made this for her because
I was like, forgive me. I love you. Absolutely loves it.
According to some sources, after a sharp decline in oysters
in the Chesapeake Bay in the nineteen eighties, fisher people
started turning more and more to blue crabs to replace it,

(51:14):
pushing harvesting further and further into the fall. In Maryland
replaced the voluntary sences taking of blue crabs with a structured,
mandatory sampling system to keep track of the blue crab
population because before people are kind of self reporting. Yeah,
they can fudge the numbers a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
In the Maryland blue crab was named at the State

(51:38):
Crustacean in Maryland introduced the Governor's Crab Action Plan to
address recreational crabbing and propose how to stabilize crab fishing,
and a series of initiatives followed after that to boost
the blue crab population in that area. Okay, and stepping
back a bit. Philip's Seafood began as a crab processing

(52:02):
plant in Maryland in nineteen sixteen, and then they began
serving food is kind of like a restaurant sort of
thing in nineteen fifty six. Then in nineteen ninety, Phillips
found a way to operate year round by relocating production
to Southeast Asia. As of recently, estimates put Phillips that
providing of crab in the US two restaurants and grocery

(52:23):
stores specifically. Yeah, and that was a part of a
whole look at like kind of the changing industry and
that whole model and what's going to happen. So that
was another thing kind of like what you were saying earlier,
where I'm like, I don't really know Philips seafood doesn't
bring a bell to me, but I feel like it's
very important in this conversation because it kept coming up.

(52:43):
So yeah, yeah, probably just a whole different episode. Um. Meanwhile,
climate change is hitting Chesapeake Bay. Hard temperatures have increased
some two degrees fahrenheit since nineteen sixty, and research indicated
that they could increase an additional freed degrees fahrenheit over
the next eighty years between now and Uh uh what

(53:08):
a weird year to say out loud anyway, Um, uh yeah,
and and that and that increase, it's also just wild. Um.
In two thousand five, um high temperatures caused this big
die off of eel grass, which is a type of
sea grass that's like basically the habitat for blue crabs
during one of their stages of juvenile growth, and it

(53:29):
and and that die off really wreaked havoc on crab
populations that that year. It's it's something that they've been
monitoring since then, right and and after some drastic drops
in the chest Peak Bay blue crab population, officials put
in place harvest limits on female crabs in two thousand eight.
This worked pretty well for several years, and in experts

(53:51):
estimated the population reached seven d and sixty five million. However,
the following year that number was three million, and it
stayed stagnant. The next year survey found that the levels
of female crabs were above safe levels but below recommendations.
The total number of crows is estimated to be around
four hundred and fifty million, a thing that could possibly

(54:14):
help UM. As of two thousand nine, researchers out of
the University of Alabama discovered on this particular hormone receptor
that serves to regulate blue crabs molting cycle. UM. Throughout
most of the year, they produce this hormone that tells
their shell to stay put. But as the weather warms
up in the spring, they stopped producing it, and that's

(54:35):
when you get peelers and molts and soft shell crabs
and UM and and this this research is cool because
industry folks could um catch like regular hard shell crabs
any old time of year and use a hormone inhibitor
to induce molting, thus creating soft shell crabs on demand
and putting less stress on crab population UM and low

(54:58):
key the whole ecosystem UM during crabs vulnerable spring and
summer molting and mating cycles. So that would be cool.
That would be uh. I had a moment again of
like this food show where we marine life show either way,

(55:20):
either way, either way. Virginia Governor Terry mccaulliffe stirred some
controversy when he said on a radio show, if anyone
from Maryland is listening, I want to be very clear,
all the crabs are born here in Virginia and they
end up because of the current being taken there to Maryland.
So really they should be Virginia crabs. Holy yeah, of course.

(55:50):
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan responded. A bunch of Maryland opinion
pieces were written and even politic factor weight in and
they backed up virginious claim. Yeah, a whole thing that
I didn't put in the the about section or the
what is its section because I didn't want to get

(56:12):
that deep into the into the ocean trenches. Um. Is
part of the life cycle of crabs, is that. Um,
the females tend to stay in the in different areas
when they're mating versus laying eggs. And Yeah, there's a
whole like movement in life cycle of both male and
female crabs into and out of the estuaries and the

(56:34):
freshwater bits and the deeper ocean. It's a complicated thing.
But I but I but I believe. I believe these
humans when they say that they are born in Virginia. Well,
Maryland's Governor Hogan his communication director Matthew Clark, responded, like
most Virginians with any sense, Essentially, the crabs move north

(56:56):
to Maryland where the waters are much more inviting in
hospital and there is a certain amount of breeding that
takes place in Maryland waters. It's not just Virginia. That's
for lovers. Wow, right, we're talking about crabs here. Just
a reminder that was honestly a way more salt than

(57:20):
I was expecting, even in our crab episode. Quite salty.
Oh and I love it. Um. That same year and
Oceania report found that thirty eight percent of crab cakes
salt in Maryland with the claim they remained with local
blue crab, were not in fact made with local blue crab. Wow,

(57:40):
or with blue crab at all. I believe, yes, I
think so. In one for the first time in recorded history,
a blue crab showed up on the shores of Ireland.
As I was researching this. That was because I usually
clicked the news tab too just to see what's up.
It just happened. Um. Yeah, So this blue crab showed
up on the shores of Ireland, and it's believed someone

(58:01):
imported it and released it into the wild. There are
some concerns about what will happen to the ecosystem, important
ecosystem that you've been talking about. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's a delicate balance, as as it always is with anything. UM.
And uh yeah, introducing non native species can can really
can really do some damage. Um. One of one of

(58:24):
the things going on with climate change UM relating to
all of this is ocean carbonation and acidification, because research
has shown that these factors could cause blue crabs too,
from what I understand, to grow bigger shells than they
traditionally have in order to protect themselves from this less

(58:45):
friendly water environment um, meaning that they will need more
food to support themselves. UM. And Furthermore, they're talking bigger shells,
but not necessarily more meat and probably fewer spawn as
well as they devote more resources to those um to
those bigger shells um. And simultaneously, some of their prey

(59:09):
like oysters UM, their shells will be weaker due to
the some of those same conditions, meaning the whole ecosystem
could get pretty seriously thrown out of whack. Write your
legislators and try to stay on top of environmental measures
in your area. I'm sorry. I try not to yell

(59:30):
at people about that thing, but oh geez, just just
when you can't help do it. Yes, for the crabs,
for that the think of the crabs, of the crops,
but not the one that had the knife, not the roh. No,
he's my favorite. That's my favorite crab of all time.

(59:53):
That's I have never related so hard to a crab. True,
pretty spectacular. Well, you know, I knew it would be
the case, but we had a lot to say. Crab. Sure,
we actually are going to split up. There's gonna be
We're going to revisit other species of crab for sure.
Oh yes, oh yes, I was like, I was like Annie,

(01:00:15):
we cannot do just a general crab episode. It will
be like the rice episode in our heads will explode.
We don't need that. We don't need that. So more
crab crab thoughts and facts to come. Yes, but that's
it for now. But we do have some listener mail
for you. We do. But first we've got one more
quick break forward from our sponsor and we're back. Yes,

(01:00:46):
thank you, and we're back with Mr Grabs, Mr Always
the Crabs, Classic crab. I don't think he's a blue crab,
though I got well, we'll know when he comes out
of the water, though he is in the water. I
don't know how accurate that is anyway, my SpongeBob anatomy notes, Yeah,

(01:01:10):
I don't. I still have never watched the show and
have no idea. I all of these, all of these
references to swim right over my head, just like a
blue crab can. Lauren uh tena are Tina wrote I
hope I'm saying that correctly. I work in a research

(01:01:31):
lab where there are about twenty of us in a
visual and vocal range of each other. As a result,
sometimes we have fun food experiments. Last summer, when we
all were in the lab as our only way to
leave the house during the pandemic, someone brought black licorice
and the next day someone brought root beer hard candies.
Several of the scientists in the labor from various Asian

(01:01:52):
countries and had not previously experienced either of those flavors,
so the whole floor embarked on an experiment together. We
pulled everyone on their opinion on liquorice and then on
their opinion on root beer. The result was surprising to me.
At least, if a person liked liquorice, they were more
likely to also enjoy it root beer, regardless of where
they grew up. However, all the scientists from Asia were

(01:02:15):
completely disgusted by both. The experiment was pretty delightful and
those of us who do like black licorice and root
beer had a great time. That makes perfect sense to me,
because there, yeah, there, there is something similar in those
flavor profiles. Also, we totally support and back these types
of food experience. Yes, oh my gosh, please all the time.

(01:02:40):
I need to know about these things. The results to us.
Uh Tom wrote I had to write in after your
pistachio episode. My ex wife and I lived in Tehran,
Iran in the early seventies, during the time of the Shah.
We loved the local pistachios as they were really good
and very cheap. This was a long time ago, but

(01:03:01):
it seems to me that a kilo was less than
two bucks. They were also much larger than the ones
we get here in the States. We invited a couple
over who were new in the country and offered them
some pistachios while we were getting food ready. When I
came to see how they were doing, I asked how
they liked the pistachios and they said they didn't care
for them, as they were too crunchy. Come to find out,
they were eating shell and all oops. I told them

(01:03:24):
to just eat the nut, but they had had enough.
That is absolutely a mistake I would make where you're
trying to like play it cool, yeah, and then you're like,
well I really don't like this, and I guess I'll continue.
I'm like maybe yeah, too bad, too bad, because those

(01:03:45):
pistachios sound amazing. Um oh they do. I'm so curious now. Yes, yes,
food questions abound, which is good for our line of work.
I suppose absolutely yes. Thanks to both of those listenershore
writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can. Our email is Hello at savorpod dot com.

(01:04:07):
We're also on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts on my heart Radio, you can visit
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listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,

(01:04:27):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way