The Species Collection

Not a fish, but no honest account of the Chesapeake leaves out the blue crab. The Latin name translates roughly as beautiful swimmer that is savoury, which is the rare case of taxonomy and appetite agreeing completely.

Blue crabs are the Bay's economic and cultural centre. The annual winter dredge survey that estimates the population is followed like an economic indicator, because it is one. Crabs depend on healthy grass beds as nursery habitat, which ties their fortunes directly to water quality — a good crab year usually means a good grass year first.

Chicken necks on a string and a dip net still work exactly as well as they did fifty years ago, which is a large part of the appeal. Know the size and sex rules before you keep any: sponge crabs, the females carrying an orange egg mass, go back in the water everywhere, every time.

Learning to read a crab takes about ten minutes and pays off forever. Flip it over: a narrow inverted-T apron is an immature male, a rounded dome is an immature female, and a broad domed apron is a mature female — a sook. Males, called jimmies, have blue-tipped claws; mature females have red or orange tips, which is where the old line about painted fingernails comes from. Maryland measures legal size point to point across the shell, and the minimum differs between hard crabs and peelers and shifts through the season.

The other thing worth knowing is the moult. A blue crab grows by shedding its shell entirely, and for a day or so afterwards it is a soft crab — the same animal, briefly defenceless, and the basis of an entire regional cuisine. Watermen watch for peelers showing a coloured line along the back paddle fin, which tells them a shed is coming within days. That single piece of observation is the difference between a bushel of hard crabs and a far more valuable catch.