days and often gets up during the 

 night to check his peelers. "Crabbers 

 certainly don't keep banker's hours," 

 he says with a chuckle. Bridges usually 

 makes three hauls with the net before 

 noon. After lunch he must get his crabs 

 to the dealer. He usually spends the 

 rest of the day working with his peelers 

 and making necessary repairs to his 

 boats or nets. 



About the end of November, Bridges 

 stops crabbing and turns to gill netting 

 until January when it becomes too cold 

 for man or fish on the water. During 

 the next two months, he makes major 

 repairs to his boat and prepares for the 

 coming spring by building around 700 

 new crab pots. Many crabbers don't 

 build their own pots, but Bridges believes 

 in doing almost anything he can himself. 



The pots are two-foot cubes made 

 from 1 '/2-inch wire mesh. The inside of 

 the pot is divided by an inverted-V 



partition. In the lower chamber of the 

 pot, Bridges places four funnels by 

 which the crabs gain entry. In the cen- 

 ter of the lower compartment is the 

 bait well that he baits with dead fish to 

 attract the scavenging blue crab. The 

 upper compartment of the trap is 

 called the parlor. After swimming into 

 the lower section of the pot to nibble 

 on the bait, the crab, looking for a 

 quick escape, rises upward through the 

 holes in the parlor floor. Once inside 

 the parlor, the crab is destined for the 

 crab picking house. 



As the conversation has progressed, 

 so has the sun, and it's time to pull in 

 the net to see what's been caught. Af- 

 ter some heaving from Bridges and few 

 squeaky turns of the wench, the first 

 haul is dumped into a tray for sorting. 

 There are crabs of all sizes, nine or ten 

 handfuls of large brown shrimp and a 

 few small fish. 



Bridges pulls a thick rubber glove on- 



to his right hand and begins picking 

 out the crabs. The number-one jim- 

 mies are placed in one basket, while 

 the smaller jimmies, she-crabs (im- 

 mature female crabs) and sooks 

 (mature female crabs) are placed in 

 another basket. In a third pail go the 

 peelers and in a fourth go the shrimp. 

 The sorting takes about 15 minutes. 

 When it's over, Bridges tosses over- 

 board all the small crabs and fish. The 

 laughing gulls, hovering close by, 

 swallow this feast in seconds. 



Other crabbers were plying the 

 sound waters this morning. And, not 

 long after we made our first haul, they 

 began chattering back and forth about 

 their catches. It seems no one was do- 

 ing particularly well today. As the day 

 got hotter and the catches smaller, 

 Bridges was ready to call it quits. He 

 had other work he could be doing if the 

 sound wasn't going to relinquish 

 anymore of its bounty today. 



Blue crabs — beautiful swimmers and good eating 



Stalked eyes, four pairs of segment- 

 ed legs, one set of menacing, jagged 

 claws and a hard, exterior frame that 

 widens into lateral spikes combine to 

 make one of the most succulent 

 creatures on the East Coast — the Atlan- 

 tic blue crab. Called callinectes 

 (Greek, beautiful swimmer) sapidus 

 (Latin, savory), the blue crab makes 

 its home from Novia Scotia to Mexico. 



Though some consider the crab an 

 ugly creature, its meat ranks alongside 

 shrimp and lobster as the best in 

 seafood. But those who think the crab 

 ugly have probably never seen a 

 basket of crabs just taken from the 

 water. Their white bellies sharply con- 

 trast their olive-green dorsal shells. 

 Mature males wave arms of rich azure 

 blue and females snap claws that are a 

 bright red-orange. Hence, callinectes 

 may not be as inappropriate a name as 

 it might first seem. 



Beside their uncanny beauty, crabs 

 also display some interesting habits. 

 One of those is shedding. In order to 

 grow a crab must shed its hard shell, 

 which does not expand. From the time 

 it first hatches until it reaches full 

 maturity, a crab may shed 25 to 27 

 times. 



Crabs signal their impending change 

 with a variety of signs that crabbers 



have described in colorful terms like 

 "busters," "peelers," "red-sign" crabs 

 and "white-rims." And, it takes a 

 sharp eye and years of experience to 

 detect the subtle signs of a crab's im- 

 pending moult. 



The first stage is the white-rim crab. 

 If you look closely at the last leg or 

 swimming fin of the crab, a thin white 

 line can be seen along its inner border. 



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