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Wager on the Water

By Donna Whicher

 

Imagine this gamble. You risk all—time, health, property—not for a shot at Powerball's millions, but just to earn a living and keep a heritage going. Watermen on the Eastern Shore have a longstanding reputation for independence and ruggedness. They're also big-time gamblers, plying their trade in an era when their success and security are growing murkier. Some simply opt out and find steady work on land; others carry on.

With summer's arrival, the Chesapeake 's waters warm up, raising the body temperature of the Bay's most famous inhabitants, blue crabs. The heat boosts their metabolism, making them more active feeders and, thus, easier to catch. For those whose livelihood hinges on the season, the race to catch crabs is on.

Anya Ford, a native of Western Maryland, entered the ranks of Eastern Shore watermen more than 2 years ago. She's a helper aboard a boat owned by John Lassahn, where she “calls crabs” and “fishes pots.” Her duties include hauling in and then lifting weighty pots overhead to dump their thudding contents into a “call box,” a crate a couple feet deep and 4-feet high. She “calls out” individual crabs' categories and sorts them accordingly. She returns the empty pots to Lassahn, the boat's driver, who baits them. There's a rhythm to her work, but that didn't come over night.

Of her first time out on the water, Ford says, “I was surprised at how many boats were around us, and I told the driver, ‘You guys sure do work close together.' He told me, ‘Not usually. They're so close because of you.'” The other watermen wanted to get an eyeful of this rarity in their midst: a woman working a boat. “He said, ‘Don't worry. They'll get used to you.' And they did.” As the men got accustomed to Ford's presence, she was getting used to the arduous work.

Anya Ford, one of the few professional women crabbers in Maryland

In the beginning it was a struggle. “It takes at least ten trips out on the water to begin to understand what to do” in response to the variety of situations that arise. “Water can be calm one minute, and the next, 3- and 4-foot waves are pounding the boat, sending you flying.” Bad weather generally doesn't cancel the workday. A sudden storm can transform a calm day into an out-of-control, anchor-dragging one. There's a canopy over the boat Ford works, but it fends off little rain when there's a blow afoot. Safety becomes a concern when the boat starts to take on water.

The crabs are a challenge, too. They're angry at being jerked out of their watery home, and they express this with claws sometimes strong enough to snip off a human finger. Ford is mindful when she shakes out a pot's contents. Jellyfish sometimes mingle in among the crabs, and their tentacles “can take your eye out.” Ford doesn't protectively cover up herself. “My mom asked me if I wear a life vest. I laughed at her! It's too hot for that,” she explains.

Working marinas are alive with the sounds of revving engines and the smell of diesel fumes well before many of our alarm clocks go off. After about 8 hours on the water, the industrious crabbers steer their portion of nature's bounty toward shore. The work isn't over, however. The rush to get the crabs from boat to shore begins, and that's followed by loading them onto trucks that zoom off to storage coolers near and far. Next, pots are washed and bait thawed for the next day. Sunday is no day of rest. “Hairy pots,” pots cruddy with barnacles and algae that can kill crabs, are cleaned and painted.

Not surprisingly, all this laborious work has changed Ford's physique. She says she lost 14 pounds her first summer on the job. She stands up and says to feel her thighs—sure enough, they're rock solid. “That's what a 12- or 14-hour workout does for you.”

While watermen may save by not shelling out cash for gym memberships, they have financial matters to consider. First, harvests are unpredictable. “One year, there are plenty crabs, the next none,” Ford says. “One day we'll catch twenty, twenty-two bushels. Three days later, all the crabs are gone. Fish are more predictable than crabs.” Throw in market fluctuations, and income seesaws even more.

One thing's relatively certain about this season: crabbers will pay a lot at the pump, just like the rest of us. Also on the rise is the price of the steel that crab pots are made from and the zinc used to prevent those pots from rusting.

What kind of harvest will 2007 deliver? The season got off to an underwhelming start, with crabs appearing later than expected. This past spring, nighttime temperatures were unseasonably cool, which meant that crabs kept low. Danny Brown, buyer for Fisherman's Seafood Market in Grasonville, was forced to purchase wholesale crabs from Louisiana and Texas . According to Brown, this, of course, made crabs “very expensive.” Nevertheless, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS) issued a joint report based on a survey of crabs dredged up last winter that isn't so dim. DNR and VIMS predict a catch of 51.8 million pounds, which is about on par with last year's haul.

Like so many harvests, crabbing has become more efficient with advances in technology, but increased efficiency doesn't guarantee profits. And some wonder whether crabbers aren't too productive at their work.

In 1990, scientists reported that 800 million crabs inhabited the bay. Alarmingly, that number dropped by more than half a mere 16 years later. Conservationists and crabbers both want a healthy blue crab population, but they differ over the specifics. Crabbers question if they're being too strictly regulated for environmental problems that others had a hand in causing. Agricultural and sewage treatment runoff and rapid development have contributed to a loss of underwater grass, home to tiny creatures that crabs feed on. When the grass disappeared, so did an important nutrient source for the blue crab.

A population surge and a loss of open space are also complicating things. The water that crabbers work is crowded with tourists' and transplants' pleasure boats. Waterfront property is being snapped up by people whose livelihoods have little connection to the Bay. Working marinas are becoming endangered, and tensions mount when crab pots pile up on newly purchased private property. Spots of available land for watermen to store equipment or to dock their boats are shrinking.

This sounds discouraging, but none of it seems to faze Ford. When she talks about crabbing, she's animated, radiating confidence and determination. She feels she takes to the water better than most; she can handle the rocking boat and doesn't get seasick. She's also adamant that her fellow watermen are “the salt of the earth…the best group of guys I've ever known.” Sounds enviable. Do people generally want to do her job? “No! Nobody wants this job. People say they do until they go out on a boat. Most can't last 45 minutes. People think I'm crazy for doing it.”

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Crabbing 101

Buck and Rider : the term for a mating pair of crabs. Also known as a doubler .

Callinectes sapidus Rathbun : the complicated and hard to pronounce scientific term for the Atlantic blue crab. The first two words commonly translate as beautiful swimmer. The Rathbun refers to Dr. Mary J. Rathbun, the scientist to first catalog the blue crab.

Gastric teeth : crabs have tiny teeth inside their bellies.

Jimmy : a large male crab. Identifiable by its deep blue claw and its apron , an abdominal shell covering that resembles an inverted letter T .

Lifespan : few blue crabs live longer than a couple of years. If not for humans harvesting them, they would likely live to age 8.

Molting : the shedding process of a crab's entire shell, antennae and all. After molting, a crab grows to fit its new roomier exterior, which uses up lots of the crab's energy.

Sook or Sookie : a mature female crab. Unlike the male's [insert upside down T]-shape, the sook's apron is broad and rounded, resembling D.C.'s Capitol Dome. Because a single female blue crab can produce up to millions of eggs in a single season, it's advisable to avoid their capture.

She-crab : an immature female crab.

Sponge crab : a female crab carrying a cluster of eggs, which can number anywhere between 750,000 and 8 million.

Waterman : a man or woman who makes a living working the water. The term was coined at least 400 years ago in England .

Donna Whicher is assistant managing editor for Whats Up? Eastern Shore .