 Blue Crabs return
:Blue crabs have been showing up in estuaries from one end of Connecticut to the other, and have proved to be particularly abundant this year, officials and recreational crabbers said. “That’s what we’re hearing,” said David Simpson, associate director of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine Fisheries division in Old Lyme. “We’re getting a lot of calls. I’ve been out myself.”
This from the Stamford, CT Advocate by way of Capecodtoday.com, verifies what Cousin Pete was learning all June — there are a shitload of blue crabs around, very tasty crustaceans one traps and then steams with a ton of Old Bay spice. Hard pickings, but the best crab meat there is. Pete was so overloaded with them (I can manage four at a sitting), that he pulled the traps and let them be.
from Bluecrab.info
Trapping isn’t nearly as fun as stalking them at night with a flashlight and a net. The pugnacious suckers make their stand and wind up in the bucket.
One of my favorite analogies of all time, one used to describe the tendency of some-naysayers, pessimists, and weasels to put down success is to call them crabs, after the observation that if you study a bucket of crabs long enough, one intrepid crab will stand on its tippy-toes, get a claw onto the handle of the pail, and begin to pull itself up and out towards freedom.
And every time the crabs below it reach up, grab the escapee, and pull them back into the doomed mob.
I guess our estuaries are completely doomed by human cess. — Callinectes sapidus is doing fine for now.
I highly recommend Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner, a great book on the culture and natural history of the Chesapeake crab fishery.