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"Beautiful swimmer that tastes good." Callinectes sapidus, the Latin name for blue crab just about characterizes our national love affair with those prehistoric-looking, side-walking, omnivorous, and delicious creatures found in bays, tidepools, and estuaries.
Of the 4400 known species of crabs, the coasts of North America host a greater variety than any other continent, and in the United States today, crab is the second most consumed crustacean, following shrimp. From Alaska's king crabs to the Dungeness crabs of the West Coast, from Florida stone crabs to the ubiquitous blue crabs found along the East, Southeast, and Gulf Coasts, Americans crave crabs steamed, deviled, stuffed, baked, or fried; in soups, salads, sandwiches, stews, and gumbos.
A classification of water creatures with ten legs and hard, round, flat shells, crabs are one of the oldest animals on earth. It's unknown who ate them first, but coastal areas worldwide contain prehistoric mounds formed by quantities of empty shells. These, along with other biologic evidence, indicate that gathering crabs (along with other shellfish and crustaceans) preceded hunting or fishing, providing basic protein in the diets of early coastal peoples. 
This was certainly the case on the early wild coasts of North America. When the British colonists arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1622, one of the unfamiliar new food sources introduced to them (along with lobsters) was the crabs left in tidepools after storms. Francis Higginson wrote in 1630, "The abundance of Sea-Fish are almost beyond believing... Eeles, Crabs, Muskles, and Oysters." In 1632, when Charles I of England sliced off a piece of northern Virginia for his friend Lord Baltimore, he placed the domain line in the Potomac River at the highwater mark on the Virginia side, thus making a present of all the crabs and oysters to Maryland, much to Virginia's chagrin.
The smallest edible crab, the pea or oyster crab, lives its entire life inside oysters' shells. In this protected environment, these tiny pink creatures are permanently soft-shelled. While not much eaten now, in the early days of the United States, they were regarded as a great delicacy. George Washington so liked them floating on oyster stews, that there was a proposal to name them Washington crabs.
The most popular and common crab in American waters is the blue crab, found from Delaware to Florida and all around the Gulf of Mexico. It's been speculated that blue crabs were transported and spread via the ballast of sailing ships.
Blue crabs are called such because of the deep blue color of the male's largest claw (females have red-tipped claws). These beautiful swimmers are bottom-dwelling predators in estuaries, lagoons, and coastal habitats of the Atlantic.
Chesapeake Bay is North America's largest estuary, an area where fresh and salt water mix. Chesapeake is a Susquehannock word meaning "great shellfish bay", and crabs were an important foodsource for its indigenous inhabitants. Blue crabs have been harvested commercially since the 1880s, and the watermen of the Chesapeake currently supply a third of the U.S. market, with 100 million pounds caught annually.
However, constant harvesting, environmental damage (primarily pesticide and fertilizer runoff), and habitat destruction contribute to the decline in the blue crab population in the Chesapeake—over the past decade, numbers of female blue crabs in the bay has declined by more than 80 percent.
Blue crabs mature at 12-18 months, reaching a size of approximately five inches wide. Males continue to grow and molt throughout their lifespan, usually two or three years, but females cease growing at sexual maturity, after 20 or so molts. Mating occurs at the final female molting, when the female produces an external egg mass, containing between 750,000 and 8 million eggs. This bright orange roe and blue crab meat are the key ingredients of she-crab soup, a traditional springtime specialty in Charleston and Savannah.
Crab cakes are another traditional specialty most often associated with blue crabs, Maryland, and the Chesapeake Bay. The practice of making minced seafood cakes with spices and bread fillers is a venerable one; evidence suggests that early English settlers introduced the practice to the region.
The great American delicacy, softshell crab, refers not to a species but to a crab at the molting period. Having split and crawled out of its old hard shell, the crab is for a short time covered only in a soft skin and can be eaten whole. Softshell crabs must be harvested within 24 hours of shedding, before the new shell hardens.
Harvested softshell crabs are primarily blue crabs. During their peeling periods, crabbers trap and move them into holding tanks, where they're monitored until they molt, at which point they're quickly shipped to processing houses to be frozen or sent fresh to market. Like almost everything, the fresher and smaller the softshells, the better they taste. The classic way to eat softshell crab is quick-fried whole, on a crusty sandwich with tartar sauce. |
