The waters of North America are home to the world's greatest variety of edible crabs, offering the makings for what could just be the ideal seafood tour. May we suggest starting with some snow crab in Atlantic Canada, moving down to the Chesapeake for some soft shelled blues and then on to Florida and the Gulf for some chilled stone crab claws and perhaps a spicy blue crab etouffee. Finishing up on the West Coast, the delightful Dungeness would set the stage for a grand Alaska Finale of king and snow crab.
Along the way, you might also get an idea of what it takes to get those crabs to market, be it from a solitary Chesapeake waterman working at dawn or a hard working crew doing battle in the Bering Sea. The crabbing life is not an easy one, but for consumers, the delicious end justifies whatever the means.
Species Specifics
- Female Opilio Crab (Chinoecetes Opilio) breed only once during their lives, storing a large number of eggs and releasing them over the next two to three years.
- Blue Crab (Callinectes Sapidus) stop eating three days before a molt, one reason they can be eaten whole (once the mouth, eyes, gills and apron have been removed).
- Found from Southwest Alaska to Southern California, Dungeness crab have been fished commercially since the late 1800's, making it the West Coast's oldest crab fishery.
- This year, for the first time, the snow crab harvest in Atlantic Canada outstripped Alaska's. At approximately 120 million pounds, it was nearly double Alaska's 65 million pound catch.
- Shelf life for unopened containers of fresh blue crab meat is six days at 39 degrees farenheit, 15 days at 32 degrees, say researchers at North Carolina State University.
Psyched About Sections
To many West Coast consumers, a whole cooked Dungeness crab at the seafood counter is a thing of beauty. These days, though, it's a thing that is getting harder to come by. The reason? Between Alaska's king crab crunch and snow crab slump, processors are doing a dynamite business in Dungie sections. Cheaper than snow crab, immune to domoic acid, (which concentrates in the crab's viscera), and selling for nearly twice what whole cooks bring, Dungie clusters appear to be catching on in a big way.
The above information is from the Seafood Leader.
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