It was an ordinary day. Told my wife I think it's about time to get out of the house and head down to Woody's Crab House in Northeast, Maryland for one of their award-winning crab cake sandwiches. I typed in their website address on my computer and within seconds a note appeared on my screen which read.... Pricing Statement from Woody's Crab House. With the prices and availability of Alaskan King Crab, Snow Crab, Dungeness Crab and Crab meat skyrocketing, we have been forced to make some hard decisions. As a business, there are three options: Cut back on portion size, cut back on quality or raise your prices. And if you are not doing one of those three things, you're going out of business. Cutting back on quality and portion sizes was not an option for Woody's Crab House. Normally we struggle with raising prices, however we have been forced to change pricing to survive. As soon as crab prices stabilize and hopefully return to normal, our prices will reflect the changing market. Wow! Wasn't sure if we should forget our trip to Woody's because of the price of their crab cake sandwiches or still make the trip to Woody's and buy something else off their menu. I guess I should have known that the price of anything that had crab meat in it was going to be high, since our local newspaper recently published a story on the front page of the paper that read "FISHING FOR ANSWERS." Story told that this year's crabbing season has been lean. Commercial crabbers in Maryland and Virginia aren't catching their limits, and the harvest in the first few months of the season was so meager that some gave up trying.
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| Slim pickings |
One long time crabber, Billy Rice, reported that, "Crabs are so scarce that me and my son are still cat fishing." Ugh! I have enjoyed a catfish or two over my lifetime, but it comes no where close to a good crab cake. I can still remember visiting with my Aunt Doris on the Elk River and catching both catfish as well as crabs. We would open the shells of the crabs and pull out the meat which mom would make into crab cakes. I might have been a young boy at the time, but I still loved the taste of crab meat. The story in the newspaper I was reading said that changes in water quality, climate change and an influx of crab-eating fish are a few reasons for the shortage of crabs this year. Newspaper also said that scientists aren't sure what's behind the slump, and many say it worries them because crabs are such an important part of the bay region's seafood industry and food culture. The Chesapeake's crab population tends to yo-yo naturally every year or two. This year though, marks the third below-average year for crab harvest. And, the amount of juvenile crabs seems to be way down. Crabs have been in deep trouble before, turning 1998 into a decade of below average abundance and subpar harvests. But, 2008 seemed to have turned the crab industry around. in 2021 the Chesapeake Bay commercial catch of crabs was 36.8 million pounds. But the number of female crabs was much lower than it should have been. As I read on I read that a Virginia Institute of Marine scientist reported that blue catfish are eating more than 2 million juvenile crabs a year. That's one big reason for the decrease in crabbing. Scientists and fish managers are getting together to try and figure out how to stop the decrease of crab population, thus the fewer crab cakes. Fishermen are hoping that restrictions on crab harvesting will make for a better harvest next year. And, that in turn means we will be able to head back to Woody's for a great crab sandwich. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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