Folks living around the Chesapeake Bay area are a little nutty on the subject of Blue Crabs. On a summer afternoon, a dozen steamed crabs with plenty of Old Bay seasoning and a glass of beer is enough to turn the most melancholy into a contented gourmand. It’s a bit of a messy affair. Newspaper covering the table, little wooden mallets for cracking the shells and empty crab carcasses piling up in the middle, and the sound of sticky fingers being sucked clean by all participants. The crab shells are sharp and fingers get scratched and the seasoning stings, but all is right with the world.

If you are not fond of crab or the messy process of consuming them, it’s better not to mention it. It’ll just start an argument and your up-bringing will be called into question.

The Chesapeake Blue Crab is the most famous and iconic species in the Bay. It’s estimated that one-third of the nation’s harvest of these crabs comes from the Chesapeake, bringing in more than $50 million per year to the local economy. Over the last twenty years blue crab catches have decreased due to relentless overfishing and, importantly, to loss of habitat from degraded water quality.

Blue crabs are a swimming crustacean that varies in color from olive to bluish green. They tend to gather in shallow water during summer and seek out deeper areas during colder months. Males tend to range into the fresher waters of the bay, into its source rivers, while females like a saltier environment. Like all crabs, they are bottom dwellers, using grass beds as a food source, a nursery habitat and for shelter.

Blue crabs mate from May through October in the brackish waters of the middle bay. When the female releases her larvae, called zoea, they become a micro-spec in the great planktonic drift that feeds many creatures in and out of the bay. Current transports the zoea out into the Atlantic where they molt several times, increasing in size. Many are eventually carried back into the Bay where they metamorphoses into a post-larval stage called the megalops. These tiny creatures crawl across the bay-bed to the upper bay and into its rivers. After a final metamorphose, they are transformed into very small crabs, which will molt several times before reaching maturity at about a year old.

The Blue Crab plays an important role in the Bay’s food web. They are both prey and predator. They provide food for filter feeders when they are in a larval stage. Later, they are prey for fish, birds and other crabs. Predatory fish like the striped bass, catfish, rays and sharks rely on young crabs as an important component of their diet.

They in turn prey on other crustaceans, small fish, marine worms and plants. They play an important clean-up role in scavenging the bottom for anything editable, living or dead.

So, when you are in the “Delmarva” area (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) roll up your sleeves and jump into a crab fest. To avoid looking like a tourist, just make sure you have butter dripping from your fingers and plenty of the red, Old Bay seasoning stuck around your mouth. Have a dazed look in your eyes and you’ll fit right in.

If you are the sand-offish, finicky type, have the crab cakes. They are delicious and your shirt won’t get spattered with stains that never come out.

For more articles about the Chesapeake by this author, see: