He continues to write for the Cape Gazette as publisher emeritus and expanded his Delmarva footprint in 2020 with a move to Bozman in Talbot County.Peeler crabs are simply hard shell blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) that show signs of molting.The molting process, commercially called shedding, is when the hard shell is cast off and the new soft shell emerges. Forney and Trish Vernon founded the Cape Gazette, a community newspaper serving eastern Sussex County, in 1993, where he served as publisher until 2020. He moved to Lewes, Delaware in 1975 with his wife Becky where they lived for 45 years, raising their family and enjoying the saltwater life. After graduating Oberlin College, he returned to the Shore where he wrote for the Queen Anne’s Record Observer, the Bay Times, the Star Democrat, and the Watermen’s Gazette. “Just like everything else, they don’t live forever.”ĭennis Forney grew up on the Chester River in Chestertown. A lot of the bigger crabs from earlier in the season have either died now or been caught up, said one waterman. The little crabs being seen now will go through a couple more sheds this year, meaning the size of hard crabs should pick up as the summer moves on into fall. Some years they bear better than other years.” “Nature and God have their way,” he said. He agreed too that crabs go through their cycles. It’s night and day, seven days a week, but it doesn’t last too long. ‘It’s August and they’ll go strong for about a month. Richard Higgins, who sloughs peeler crabs in Neavitt, agreed that the peeler crab run is about on schedule. We’re getting them now like we always do.” “If you don’t see peeler crabs in the tanks in August,” said one waterman, “you might as well move. Then they get cleaned and packed for fresh and frozen markets. Men and women check the tanks every four hours around the clock to fish out freshly shed crabs before they start to harden. Lights burning all night long above shallow, white, plastic tanks, replenished with a steady flow of creek water in and out, signal the run is on. Those peelers will be shedding their old shells and becoming soft crabs, about thirty percent larger than they were before their slough. Trotliners and potters bring in peelers for shedding operations along creeks up and down the various rivers. Demand for crabmeat, a top of the line seafood, always seems to be high.Īs if on cue though, peeler tanks at operations up and down the Bay are starting to fill. Meanwhile, some Eastern Shore restaurants have taken crabs and crab cakes off their menus because prices are so high and supply unpredictable. Really, it’s about normal.” Normal, but not a bumper yearĪ report from a crabber down around Crisfield confirmed the scarcity as did a report from the upper Bay, north of Rock Hall. What’s that tell you? Those juvenile crabs are the ones we should have been seeing in July but there just weren’t as many. “Last year demand was good and so was supply and we were paying half as much as we are this year. “Not every year is a bumper year,” said one mid-Bay buyer this week. This year the survey showed fewer juvenile crabs in the system than last year. Over the past couple of decades, that survey of more than 100 locations up and down the Chesapeake, in Maryland and Virginia, has generated fairly reliable predictions of the crabbing season ahead. 1 crabs – at least five and a half inches, hard, and no whities – the cost of fuel and bait makes it tough for watermen to make much money when crabs are this hard to catch.īack in the spring, scientists released the results of their winter dredge survey. He hoped to fill another basket before going in for the day but clearly he expected pickings to be scarce. In a few hours, he had barely topped one basket. He threw his hands up in the air and then let them fall.
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