Not only is May a good month for 

 female peelers, it is an excellent 

 month for peelers in general. Like 

 almost every other creature of nature 

 in the spring, the crab casts off the old 

 of winter and takes on the new of 

 spring. And all of this shedding makes 

 a jackpot for peeler crabbers who get 

 prices like $8 to $10 a dozen. 



But, Bridges is not getting rich. A 

 peeler operation requires a major in- 

 vestment in money and time if it is go- 

 ing to pay off for the crabber. 



For instance, this year Bridges add- 

 ed 30 or so new concrete trays to ex- 

 pand his peeler operation. He built 

 about 700 pots, which cost $6 to $8 

 each. He must consider rising prices for 

 operating his boats. And there are 

 countless other costs for everything 

 from the wenches on his boat to the 

 huge freezer he uses to store his crabs 

 before shipping. 



"So far this year I haven't come 

 even on my investment," Bridges says 

 with a sigh. "People think you're mak- 

 ing a lot of money when you tell them 

 how many you shipped and the price 

 you're getting for soft crabs. But 

 what they forget is the money it takes 

 to make that shipping possible." 



But money isn't the only expen- 

 diture it takes to make a peeler opera- 

 tion successful. It takes time — 24 

 hours of it. The trays must be checked 

 every four or five hours religiously for 

 newly shed crabs and dead crabs. 



Bridges says he lets a crab "firm up" 

 for about an hour after it has shed 

 before he removes it from the water for 

 packing. But he can't let the crab firm 

 to the papershell stage, which can 

 begin as early as six or seven hours af- 

 ter shedding. 



If a crab reaches the papershell stage 

 then it is worthless to the crabber and 

 is usually discarded. But Bridges is 

 trying to work up a market for the 

 papershell. Stripped of its thin shell 

 and legs, the papershell can be fryed in 

 a light batter and eaten just like the 

 soft shell crab. 



Sea Grant advisory agent Hughes 

 Tillett of Manteo and seafood specialist 

 Sam Thomas of the NCSU Seafood 

 Laboratory in Morehead City have 

 been helping Bridges develop a market 

 for the papershell by asking restaurant 

 owners and seafood dealers to give the 

 papershell a try. 



Bridges thinks it is the papershell's 

 name that turns people away from try- 

 ing the crab. "I think if you could get 



'em on the market under a different 

 name, then you could sell 'em like hot- 

 cakes," he says. 



Bridges sells his soft shell crabs to 

 seafood dealers in the north where he 

 can get top-of-the-line prices. "Last 

 year I was asking 25 cents more than 

 most Chesapeake Bay crabbers and 

 they were still meeting my price 

 because they told me mine were the 

 best-looking soft shells on the 

 market," he boasts. 



With freshly steamed crabs piled 

 high before her and a dozen plastic 

 containers to the side, Lue Lewis is all 

 business as she rhythmically cracks 

 and extracts the sweet meat found in 

 blue crab claws. A veteran crab picker 

 of 18 years, Lewis works for the Luther 

 Lewis and Son Seafood in Davis, one of 

 the 30 commercial crab processing 

 plants in North Carolina. 



The crab meat industry is big 

 business in this state. According to 

 Sam D. Thomas of the North Carolina 

 State University Seafood Laboratory 

 in Morehead City, a record 26 million 

 pounds of live blue crabs were landed 

 in North Carolina last year. A $16 

 million industry, commercial crabbing 

 owes most of its wide distribution and 

 increasing demand to the 30 processors 

 and picking plants. Here, local and 

 plant crabbers sell their catch, grading 

 out the number ones (big jimmies or 

 male crabs) for the basket market and 

 the number twos (generally male crabs 

 under six inches) and number threes 

 (sooks or female crabs) for picking. 

 The spring basket market in North 

 Carolina begins around mid-June when 

 the Chesapeake crab supply is low and 

 the Baltimore steamed-crab restaurant 

 demand is high. 



To prepare the other blue crabs for 

 picking, baskets holding several hun- 

 dred pounds of the crustaceans are 

 steam-cooked in large retorts. Thomas 

 says that a small operation, employing 

 about 10 pickers, can pick approx- 

 imately 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of crabs 

 a day. An average 10 to 15 percent 

 return will yield 400 to 500 pounds of 

 the delicious meat. 



Demonstrating a high degree of 

 manual dexterity at full production, 

 pickers' flying hands and nimble ' 



Bridges says he would eventually 

 like to do nothing but shed crabs. "I 

 would like to buy the peelers off the 

 crabbers in the area, shed 'em out, 

 then sell 'em up north," he says. "I 

 figured it out and we'd both be better 

 off that way. A lot of crabbers 

 wouldn't waste their time and money 

 trying to shed their crabs if they had a 

 shedding house to take their peelers to. 

 That's the way they do it in Maryland 

 and Virginia." 



fingers blur as they extract meat for 

 which they get about 80 cents per 

 pound. The crab meat is divided into 

 three basic categories: prime lump or 

 backfin, which is only about two per- 

 cent of the live weight; special or 

 flaked meat; and the claw which yields 

 cocktail claws and claw meat. When 

 picked and packed by weight, crab 

 meat is marketed as fresh-cooked 

 meat, pasteurized meat, fresh or frozen 

 patties and canned cooked meat or 

 soups. 



The majority of the pickers in North 

 Carolina's processing plants are 

 women, older women. Lue Lewis and 

 Mary Willis, another 18-year veteran 

 picker, enjoy the routine work, ad- 

 ditional income and family-type at- 

 mosphere, but admit there's little 

 future in it for young people. The often 

 long days, which can be dull and 

 frustrating, make this type of work un- 

 appealing to many except as a tem- 

 porary job. Sam Thomas predicts 

 labor will continue to become more un- 

 dependable as the older women retire, 

 leaving vacant chairs at the picking 

 table. 



Mechanization is being tested in 

 North Carolina with more than one 

 processor expressing an interest 

 beyond mere curiosity. This past 

 April, the Seafood Lab gave a 

 demonstration on mechanical crab 

 picking equipment, inviting all state 

 processors. Over 75 percent, the best 

 response ever, attended and asked 

 questions. One processor in the state is 

 using mechanical equipment this year, 

 yet he still retains a regular picking 

 crew to get the claw and lump meat his 

 machine is incapable of extracting. 



Continued on next page 



Processing a valuable product 



