A CRAB-SHEDDING OPERATION 



David Gallop's crab-shedding 

 operation is in a two-room building beside 

 his neat ranch-style home in a quiet 

 neighborhood in Columbia. Despite the chill 

 outside, the air is heavily humid from eight 

 shallow recirculating tanks. 



Inside the tanks are jimmies, male blue 

 crabs. They are lively, and almost comically 

 suspicious as they scuttle on tiptoe with 

 eyes set on stalks, checking out the new 

 arrivals who are checking them out. 

 Sometimes, for no apparent reason, there is 

 a quiet sideways stampede to one or another 

 comer of a tank. 



The jimmies will be used as bait in 

 peeler pots to lure sexually mature females 

 about to undergo their last molts. It is during 

 the short 12-hour interval when she has lost 

 her hard shell that the female can success- 

 fully mate. Vulnerable during molting, the 

 females seek out males, who offer the 

 protection of their hard shells. 



The females' vulnerability during this 

 shell-less time is heightened by the fact that 

 they are now soft shell crabs, much sought 

 by human diners. Female "peelers" will be 

 kept in the tanks until they molt. Since 

 shells begin to harden quickly, the soft shell 

 crabber is on constant watch until all 

 shedding is complete. 



In nature, females produce from about 

 700,000 to 2 million eggs between two and 

 nine months after mating. Out of that 

 incredible number, only a few will grow to 

 become an adult crab. 



The microscopic eggs provide food for 

 other species as well as for other crabs. 

 Phillips says this is an "incalculable" 

 contribution of a healthy blue crab popula- 

 tion to the ecosystem. 



Turano is clearly in his element, talking 

 with Phillips and Gallop about filtering 

 systems, dissolved oxygen and salinity 

 levels and good bacteria that turn ammonia 

 waste products into harmless substances. 

 Besides his background in marine biology, 

 Turano says he hopes his mariculture 

 experience can be a benefit to crabbing 

 operations like Gallop's, which are hybrids 



between fishing from the wild and fish 

 "farming." 



Turano says Gallop's is a "model" crab 

 shedding operation. Gallop has a very low 

 mortality rate among his shedding crabs in 

 part, he says, by keeping an appropriate 

 ratio of crabs to water in the tanks. That 

 means 1 to 1.5 gallons per crab. It's pure 

 greed, he says, to crowd too many crabs into 

 a system. Ultimately overcrowding works 

 against the crabber because of high mortality. 



Turano says it's also a plus that Gallop 

 knows the crabs in his system. He caught 

 them himself and has kept them in optimal 

 condition. 



Eventually, the talk rums from the 

 technical aspects of crabbing to the 

 personal. Phillips and Gallop came into 

 crabbing through different routes. Phillips 

 "grew up on an idyllic creek," he says, near 

 the Masonboro Sound. He and his siblings 

 made a little money crabbing as children, he 

 says. After college, the early experiences 

 drew him back. 



Ask Gallop how long his family has 

 been in crabbing, and he laughs. He knows 

 it goes back at least to his great-grandfather 

 — probably further. Gallop's older son 

 helps him with crabbing when he's home 

 from college in the summer. Will he, too, be 

 drawn into fishing for a living? Gallop is 

 quick to answer: "He will not be a crabber. 

 You can see it in his eyes." 



Phillips also says he doesn't expect his 

 son to follow him into crabbing. Both men 

 are matter-of-fact about this. "You have to 

 have a deep passion" to be a crabber, says 

 Phillips. 



But the unspoken question lingers. 

 Might small, independent crabbing operations 

 be approaching the end of a long road? 



ON THE DOCK 



The dock Phillips leases for his hard 

 crab operation is at the end of another long 

 road — this one sandy, rutted and puddled. 

 On the other side of a channel are the 

 choppy waves of the Albemarle Sound. 



In peak season the area is like a 

 multicultural carnival, Phillips says. Like 



agriculture, crabbing attracts recent immi- 

 grants looking for a better life. On busy 

 days, voices of different languages fill the air 

 "like you're in an aviary," he says. 



But all is quiet on this windy day. Boats 

 line both sides of the channel. Crab pots of 

 many colors and many feet high are stacked 

 on the shore — around 5,000 in all, Phillips 

 says. The folk wisdom is that different colors 

 are effective at different depths and salinities. 



Phillips calls the yellow-and-green crab 

 pots "John Deeres," the orange-and-blacks 

 "Halloweens," and the green-and-reds 

 "Christmases." But the unconventional 

 Phillips says, "I'm a traditionalist," and 

 prefers black. 



Turano helps Phillips sort a recent crab 

 catch. Any "stills" or unhealthy-looking ones 

 are separated out. Turano jokes about the 

 usefulness of the Neoprene gloves Phillips 

 gives him in defending against the feisty 

 crabs, but he gets into the act whole- 

 heartedly. 



One of the recent changes in crabbing is 

 in bait. Some people use chicken parts and 

 believe crabs like them, shall we say, aged. 

 But Phillips says, "Crabs love fresh bait — 

 the fresher the better." 



Phillips prefers fish for bait. Yet he has 

 made concessions in order to be competitive. 

 He tugs a basket of shrimp heads out of the 

 freezer, explaining that they catch more 

 crabs. 



It is, perhaps, a small concession. How 

 many others might be made in order to 

 sustain the crabbing industry remain to be 

 seen. Turano says he hopes the research that 

 comes out of the blue crab project — 

 research driven by the insights of crabbers 

 themselves — will keep crabbing in North 

 Carolina on the road to a healthy future. □ 



For more information on the Blue Crab 

 Research Project, call Marc Turano at 910/ 

 253-2610. His e-mail address is 

 marc_turano @ ncsu.edu. 



For information about the blue crab 

 processing industry and the problem of 

 foreign imports, visit www.nccrabs.com on 

 the Web. 



34 HIGH SEASON 2001 



