the island where you do nothing — thank you whidbey chamber of commerce
Add comment March 20th, 2009
Archive for March, 2009
crab aquaculture
Add comment March 20th, 2009
Like I said, the days of the Great Crab Drives are over. Stanwood fell into a century of decline and its heydays were lost in the mists of time. The great undersea Serengetti of Saratoga Straits gradually succumbed to over harvesting and illegal hunting until finally the entrepreneurs of the South End turned to aquaculture for economic viability and the days of free range crabbing were doomed.
For awhile we had the range wars. Fence cutting was common and violence too. The old South Enders didn’t take kindly to seeing the tidelands sectioned by barb wire. Devil wire, they called it and went out by moonlight to cut it open. Might as well try to stop the Gated Communities of today for all the good it’d do.
So finally the eelgrass pastures, once stretching from South Camano to Bristol Bay, were gridded and barbed and the old timers gave it up as a lost quixotic cause. When I first arrived in these parts, the old growth nettle forests were gone and so were the wild crabs. Oh, I know what they say: these farm raised crustaceans aren’t really all that different, but the old boys tell me the taste is mostly gone now. They say they dye em red artificially before taking em to market. They say they’re escaping and breeding with the last of the wild Dungeness so the wild ones will be lost forever. They say antibiotics and the food they give em – chopped up crab mostly – might give rise to strange diseases. There’s rumors of Mad Crab every month over at Tyee Store. And I gotta ya, I’ve seen peculiar behavior there myself.
But the world changes, that’s the truth, and there’s no going back. Pretty soon we’ll get Chinese crab grown in the Yangszte, 10 legged crustaceans painted red with lead paint. Cheap though. Real cheap. And another South End industry will bite the dust. Or the sand. And the legends of the crabs will be lost as surely as the nettle forests. So eat up. And don’t worry about that Mad Crab. Our crabs today are government inspected. So you know they’re safe…….
a real brief but concise history of south end crabbing
Add comment March 20th, 2009
I guess I’ve lived on the South End long enough to see many changes in Crabbing Techniques. Down by us we still walk for the dangerous beasts, armed with only a potato rake and our wits. Obviously the crabs have a definite advantage…. If, as sometimes happens, the wily Dungeness gets the potato rake, well, the poor South Ender is rendered nearly helpless and few, if any, hear those anguished screams.
Some of my newcomer neighbors can afford traps and boats. Boats with motors even. They launch at high tide and bait the traps with caviar and special crackers from Trader Joe’s. They say they catch crab, but I suspect they eat the bait themselves later with lobster flown in from Maine.
In the olden days, when crabbing was a mainstay of South end maritime economics, we drove the great Dungeness herds north every spring to the stockyards of Utsalady and Stanwood. These were difficult and dangerous drives for the crab cowboys — and many a young wrangler never made it up the coast. Crab stampedes were a constant source of concern. Knee deep in the eelgrass with 10,000 head of the crustaceans clacking claws, the smallest motion would set em to running. Old drovers still tell the story of Mabana Mike, caught in the stampede of ’09 with a herd of barnacle crusted monsters whittling him down like a chainsaw speed carving contest. Old Stumpy, they called him after that at the Tyee Retirement Villa. Never the same. The sound of a denture clacking would set him off for days, the nurses said.
But when the crabs were delivered and the happy Crabpokes had money in their waders, you better believe Stanwood and Utsalady resounded to the whoops and cries of drunken drovers celebrating another successful drive to market. You see an occasional crabber in the Hotel now, a small reminder of those South End glory days when Crab was King and Crabboys were too. So when you’re eating high on the shell this year, remember you’re partakin in a bit of history. And be careful. Don’t want to hurt yourselves with those nutcrackers and picks…
