(bright music)
- Crabs baby, crabs!
- Crabs, crabs, crabs, crabs!
- I got crabs!
(bright music)
- Welcome to Maryland, population 455 million,
not people, I'm talking about blue crabs,
Maryland's much tastier population,
although I've never tasted people before,
I guess that line's kinda weird.
Anyway, the Chesapeake Bay has over 1/3 of
all blue crabs harvested in the country,
and while Virginia has its own proud tradition
of working these waters, it's Maryland that
lives, breathes, and of course eats
Chesapeake blue crab to the fullest.
- Maryland crabs!
- Crabs!
- They love it hard shell, they love it soft shell
and they love it pretty much every way in between,
but crab isn't just for eating in Maryland,
it's for fishing, picking, packing, and celebrating
like the culinary and economic royalty that it is.
After dipping to dangerously low levels a few
decades ago because of pollution and over-harvesting,
Maryland's favorite crustacean is thriving
on the bay once again, thanks to the watermen,
scientists, and regular old crab loving citizens
who dug in deep and helped the blue crab
population claw its way back.
(bright music)
There are literally thousands of Chesapeake watermen
who launch their low-riding dead rise boats from
Maryland docks, and they all hit the water early,
real early, so we woke up before sunrise to work
the lines with waterman who have been crabbing
the upper bay for decades.
Meet Steve Retallick.
How long you been doing this for?
- Started coming out here when I was 8 so,
probably about 20 years, 18, 20, years.
Usually get out on the boat about 5:30 or so,
and don't get back until about 3, 4 o'clock.
First we get to get the flag on the boat,
then we pull the flag up through there on the rope,
and Bob turns the winder on and the pop comes up
then you gotta un-clip it, you dump out the crabs,
put fresh bait in it, close the door and
get ready to put it back in the water.
- And you sell direct to restaurants, you
don't sell to like a packing house?
- Right, yeah, directly to restaurants.
Just so they know the crabs that we're bringing comes out of the water the same day
and its not sitting in the cooler for 3 or 4 days
and being passed on from one guy to another to another,
they know it's coming directly
out of the water right to the store.
- Like many crews, Steve's is family.
His uncle, Bob Wiley runs the trout line
and captains the Dragon Lady with
the steady hand of a 30 year waterman.
- I'm a third generation, been doing it all my life.
- How many crabs you think you've caught?
- Too many to mention.
(Host laughing)
- What was it like a couple decades ago late out here?
- The water quality has been definitely getting better.
Years ago, you know, there was a lot of pollution and all,
and now the state has stepped up and are cleaning
the bay up, and definitely helps us pride in
a cleaner bay and we can catch more volume of crab,
and its got its good points, bad points,
you come out here, some days you catch crabs,
other days you may not, but overall,
I'd rather be doing this than
sitting in an office somewhere.
- Yeah
- If I wasn't a waterman, I wouldn't know what to do.
(Steve laughing)
- Watermen like Steve and Bob are a vital part
of Maryland's fishing industry, which adds
about 600 million to the states economy each year.
Larger commercial vessels might
sell their catch to industrial packing houses in
the lower bay, but a small family operation
like the Dragon Lady usually sells direct to restaurants,
and nothing beats a fresh crab boil at a true
blue Maryland crab house.
So with our morning on the water coming to an end,
we hopped in the car, crossed the big bridge,
and headed for Annapolis, Maryland's capital,
and home to The Point, a top notch crab spot
where Chef Bobby Jones was prepping a
straight from the bay crab boil just for us.
- These are Chesapeake Bay blue crabs,
we source all of our crabs locally from Maryland.
(bright music)
If I'm just hanging out, cracking crabs
with friends and family, I'll pick crabs a certain way.
This is kind of a casual way.
- Show me.
- Hold 'em in your palm, put your thumb on that back fin.
- Okay, thumb on the back fin.
- Take the top off like that.
- Take the top off!
- Yup, and see right in here.
- Yup.
- That's like pure love, that's wonderful.
- Oh, it doesn't look good but it tastes good.
- So this is all just crab fat here?
- Yeah, crab fat.
- Can I pop this in my mouth, here?
- Yeah, just taste it, I mean, that's crabby dude.
- Crab butter, my goodness.
- I mean it's rich, its like minerally.
- Oh my god.
- If I'm having a crab stock or a
fish stock, I want that in there.
- Hell yeah!
(bright music)
- So then you have your topless crab,
and then we're gonna take it with our thumbs
on this piece and just crack it right in half.
(bright music)
So yeah try it with just a little bit of vinegar,
and a little bit of this, that's good
eating right there, brother.
- Oh wow the vinegar takes it to a totally different level!
- It's apple cider vinegar, it brightens everything up.
Spice is really what gives it this kind of boldness,
and heat, and salt, but by itself it is
this self-sweet, soft texture, very delicate,
it's like nothing else on the planet,
as far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely
a difference between the fat content,
the sweetness, the salinity, and also,
there's a personal side of it, just growing up
in Baltimore, Maryland, and I know a lot of
people that do this, this is how they make their living.
It's part of who we are as
Marylanders, and it speaks for itself.
(bright music)
- If picking hard shell blue crabs with an ice cold
natty bow in your hand is work, that must
be the best damn work there is.
We cracked our last claws with Chef Bobby and set off
to meet up with a pair of Marylanders that are
doing a totally different sort of crab work.
Establishing sustainable fishing practices
to preserve the Chesapeake's blue crab bounty
for the next generation.
(electric music)
- The Chesapeake has had a pretty
impressive revitalization period.
- It was in bad shape, all the sewage
was going into the Chesapeake.
- [Guest] And that means the crabbers and their
families are dependent on this crab
population and a healthy bay.
- Because the crab population in 2008 was
declared a federal disaster, it is much cleaner now.
- We've worked hand-in-hand for the last 8 years
with Dr. Eric Schott who is a crab biologist
out of Harvard University, is working at the
University of Maryland studying the crab population.
We harvest crabs for them to do their research.
- You guys actually helped them, or discovered a virus.
- So I was very excited, I said,
"Look, if you're gonna let me dissect something, come
on over and let's work together."
When commercial crabbers and the scientists
work together to problem solve, I think
we've proven that we've made a formidable team.
- The main way that we sustainably harvest
is by throwing the light crabs back.
A light crab is one that has recently shed,
and his shell is just getting hard,
but he hasn't filled up with meat yet.
- We think they need to stay in the bay
to mate, to grow, and to sustain the population,
so we never harvest them.
We wish some of our friends would join
us in this practice, but so far we have
not been terribly successful.
- Because it's technically legal to take.
- And it's profitable.
- Adult female population was up 31 percent from last year,
that's great, and the scary thing is the juvenile
population is down 54 population from last year.
- You've got to look down the line into the future
and if you can't see beyond this weeks harvest
or this seasons harvest, then you're not gonna
make those critical choices that are so
important for the future of our industry.
It's better for the environment, it's
better for the crab population, and it's better
for the consumer.
- You're working to try and make things better,
why, why is this so important to you?
- It's independence, it's being able to
go out there and work for myself, and it's hard work.
- And we don't wanna lose that history and heritage,
and the tradition of what a waterman means
in the Chesapeake Bay, it's as old as
the founding of the state, and
therefore it is very important to us.
- I'm so passionate about these crabs
and wanting the population to continue is because
I grew up doing this, when I was a kid I remember
hours and hours and days and days of summers
throwing a little hand-line out and pulling it in
and scooping a crab, and that was a wonderful thing,
and I want kids to be able to do that forever, simple.
(bright music)