"I wouldn't be in it if it weren't profitable." 



— Murray Bridges 



dozen soft crabs. For those crabs, he 

 got as much as $18 per dozen and as 

 little as $9 per dozen. 



Before you try to figure out how 

 much money he made this year. 

 Bridges says you'd better consider his 

 operating costs. He has 80 shedding 

 trays, which he set up at a cost of 

 about $100 apiece. Add to that the cost 

 of keeping his pumps running, his 

 freezer cooling and his lights on. Then 

 there are the costs of cartons for ship- 

 ping and for freight to northern 

 markets. In all, Bridges estimates his 

 weekly operating costs are about 

 $1000. Still, he says he's not discourag- 

 ing other fishermen from soft crab- 

 bing. "I wouldn't be in it if it weren't 



profitable," he says. 



Not all crab-shedding operations are 

 so large. Larry Holden, owner of 

 Holden Seafood in Shallotte, started 

 shedding crabs last year. He set up 

 twelve tanks at a cost of about $100 

 each. He says his first season wasn't 

 profitable because there just weren't 

 many crabs to be had. He only shed 

 2,000 crabs — not enough to cover 

 those initial costs. 



Milton Styron agrees that mother 

 nature didn't produce many peelers 

 during the 1983 season. In 1981, a good 

 year, he shed about 1,200 dozen crabs. 

 So far this year, he has only produced 

 about 170 dozen. 



But when the season is good, there's 



no problem with marketing your crabs, 

 say soft-shell crabbers. Terry Conway, 

 owner of the John T. Handy Company 

 in Crisfield, Maryland, agrees. The 

 Handy Company is the largest dis- 

 tributor of soft-shell crabs in the coun- 

 try. Conway says, "You usually don't 

 have to worry about a market for your 

 soft crabs. Fortunately, demand 

 usually exceeds supply." 



Conway's advice to a fisherman just 

 beginning to shed crabs is to focus on 

 the quality of his crabs. "Soft-shell 

 crabs are just like any other food com- 

 modity," he says. "The person with 

 the highest quality gets the best 

 price." 



— Nancy Davis 



Blue 

 Crab 

 Biology 



A blue crab isn't afraid of coming out of its shell. In 

 fact, the blue crab molts from 20 to 30 times dur- 

 ing its three- to four-year lifetime (females shed 

 slightly fewer times than males). 



The blue crab must shed its exoskeleton to grow 

 because its shell, made up largely of chitin, produces no 

 growth cells. Small crabs increase in size 30 to 50 percent 

 after each molt, while larger crabs increase 20 to 30 per- 

 cent. Very small crabs shed every three to five days. As 

 the crabs grow larger, they shed less frequently. Large 

 crabs molt every 30 to 50 days. 



With some exceptions, the female ceases to molt when 

 she becomes sexually mature. An immature female or 



"she-crab" has a triangular abdominal apron, while one 

 that has reached maturity, a sook, has a semi-circular 

 apron. Only during the final molt can the female blue 

 crab mate. 



The courtship of the blue crab is marked by the gallan- 

 try of the males. After attracting a soon-to-be-mature 

 female, the male cradles the female beneath him with his 

 swimming legs until she molts, which may be as much as 

 a week away. Crabbers refer to the pair as "doublers" or 

 a "buck and rider." During the female's final moft, the 

 male continues to protect his future mate by making a 

 cage around her with his body. Once the female has 

 molted, the pair mate and the male again cradles the 

 female until her shell hardens. 



Shedding requires all of the strength the crab can 

 muster. Wiggling out of the old shell can take up to three 

 hours and some crabs, especially older ones, may die in 

 the process. Sapped of its strength and soft in body, the 

 blue crab is especially vulnerable to attack from 

 predators and even from its own hard-shell brothers. 



For one to two hours after shedding, the crab absorbs 

 water and completes the expansion of its new shell. After 

 about four hours, the crab will begin to harden unless it is 

 taken from the water. When the shell feels leathery to the 

 touch, the crab has become a "papershell" or "buck- 

 ram." 



Between 24 and 48 hours after molting, the crab's shell 

 reaches its premolt hardness. 



