Photo by Steve Murray 



A crabber checks his crab pots near Harkers Island 



turned to his native Outer Banks he 

 decided to take up crabbing. "If you 

 like what you're doing, then you're go- 

 ing to want to learn more about it," 

 Bridges says. "That's the way it was 

 with me. I learned some by doing 

 myself and the rest I've learned by 

 talking with others." 



For instance, Bridges knows that 

 crabs are often concentrated along the 

 sides of depressions or narrow craters 

 in the sound bottom. "I figure the 

 crabs like the sloughs 'cause the water 

 is cooler there," he says. "And they 

 settle along the sides 'cause the current 

 runs too strong through the valley of 

 the slough." 



To make this "learned" knowledge 

 pay off, Bridges has bought a depth 

 recorder for his boat. With the re- 

 corder he can search out these depres- 

 sions. "The depth recorder is an expen- 

 sive piece of equipment that most 

 crabbers don't have," Bridges says. 

 "But for me it has paid off in better 

 catches. I ain't like a lot of crabbers 

 who think their way is the only way. 

 I'm willing to try something new. I'm 

 not set in my ways yet." 



Bridges was one of the first crabbers 

 in the area to try a hydraulic pot 

 puller, which pulls the wire pots laden 

 with crabs from the water. He rolls up 

 his sleeve to show the veins that stand 

 out along his lower arm. "See these?" 

 he says. "They came from pulling up a 

 couple hundred pots a day. My arms 

 would just ache at night. Now I just 

 feed the pot rope into the puller and it 

 does the work for me." 



Bridges says crabbing in the 

 Roanoke is as good this year as ever. 

 "It's not unusual to get 30 or 40 crabs 

 in a single pot on a good day," he says. 

 "The most I've ever caught in one pot 

 was a hundred. But, there's a lot more 

 people fishing crabs this year and that 

 means more of us are dividing up the 

 catch." 



He boastfully claims that North 

 Carolina blue crabs are as plentiful and 

 large as Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, 

 which often have been proclaimed the 

 biggest and the best found anywhere. 

 "Virginia hasn't got anything we don't 

 have here in North Carolina," he says. 

 "Our crabs are just as good, but 

 Virginia does do a better job of looking 



after their crabs. They have all kinds 

 of research going on at VIMS (the 

 Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences) 

 and the state limits the number of 

 small crabs a fisherman can keep. By 

 only allowing a very small percentage 

 of a catch to be less than five inches 

 wide, then naturally their crabs are go- 

 ing to look bigger and better to seafood 

 dealers than ours." (North Carolina 

 allows up to 10 percent of a crabber's 

 catch to be less than five inches wide.) 



"I think we need some tougher laws 

 down here to make our crabs more 

 competitive on northern markets," he 

 says. "Now a lot of crabbers aren't go- 

 ing to agree with me about this 'cause 

 they sell straight to picking houses and 

 they get paid by the pound. So, all that 

 matters to them is how much they 

 catch, not what size they are. But 

 crabbers in Virginia and Maryland 

 grade their crabs out and sell the big 

 number-one jimmies (male crabs about 

 six inches wide) for more than the rest 

 of the catch. They have to do a little 

 more work, but it pays off." 



Bridges certainly isn't afraid of 

 work. He puts in 14 hours a day most 



