| 
The blue crab, harvested on the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, changes color when it is cooked. | 
Crabber Roy Darby Sr. of Slidell pulls a fresh catch of blue crab out of Lake Pontchartrain. Helping out is his son, Roy Darby Jr., at right. The pair demonstrated their skills to state legislators during an outing sponsored by the Louisiana Crab Task Force, Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, and the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. | | SLIDELL - Roy Darby Sr. motored up to a buoy marking one of his crab traps in Lake Pontchartrain. In a long-practiced move, the 63-year-old Darby, helped by his son, Roy Jr., pulled a trap from the bottom of the lake, dumped the catch of blue crabs into a work box, threw out the old bait, rebaited the trap and tossed it back into the water. As they went about their tasks, the two men were watched by state lawmakers brought down to Slidell by the crab industry to help them become familiar with how one of the country's top blue crab fisheries works and with the challenges facing the industry. | 
Crabber Roy Darby Sr., left, explains how he tells when a crab is ready to shed its shell to LSU Sea Grant employee Amanda Hardesty and state Rep. Mickey Frith, D-Abbeville, at Darby's soft-shell crab shedding facility in Slidell. |
Since hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, there are 40 percent fewer licensed commercial crabbers, Pete Peterson, chairman of the Louisiana Crab Task Force, said. "There was nothing for them to come back to" since the hurricanes caused loss of docks, icehouses, boats, gear and customers. Fuel and bait costs have gone up, and processing plants - if they are even in business - are having trouble getting labor, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries shrimp and crab program biologist Martin Bourgeois said. On top of that, there has been a 20 to 30 percent dockside price drop for live crabs because crabs are so plentiful that even with smaller numbers of commercial crabbers, the catch is almost as large as in 2004. And, competition from cheap foreign imports has suppressed the prices paid for smaller crabs picked for meat, Bourgeois said. This is in contrast to oyster and fin fish prices, which are up because of a lack of production. Roy Darby Jr., 39, has been crabbing with his father since shortly after graduating from high school. "Expenses now are so high compared to what we are getting for our crabs," he said. "Fuel in 1986 was 45 to 50 cents a gallon. Now, it's $2.25, and that's cheap. Some days we can use up to 100 gallons" checking crab lines. | During the summer, the Darbys crab close to home, but in winter, they head out into the Gulf of Mexico, to Mississippi Sound and Breton Sound, he said. An average line of traps can vary from 10 traps up to 100 traps depending on the area being fished. (A single trap rig costs almost $30.) The father-and-son team's two boats sank during Hurricane Katrina. They now use only one of their salvaged boats. "In Louisiana, blue crab is king," said Mark Schexnayder with the LSD AgCenter Sea Grant Extension Program. | 
Darby Jr.
| Louisiana crabbers "contribute a little over one-third of the nation's blue crabs," which translates into $300 million to the state's economy, Bourgeois told the legislators. According to information from the state Wildlife and Fisheries crab management program, commercial landings in Louisiana average roughly 44 million pounds per year worth more than $32 million dockside. "Dockside value is the price paid the fisherman," Schexnayder explained. "That value will be relatively low compared to its impact on the economy of those coastal communities because there is a multiplying factor that economists use when the products are sold and resold and value added to them. The blue crab fishery is one of our major fisheries, and in these small communities, it is one of the driving industries for the entire community." | 
In one of the first steps in shelling crabs, seasonal laborers Juan Cupel, left, and Alfonso Alvarado remove the legs of the cooked crustaceans at a very fast rate inside Pontchartrain Blue Crabs Inc. in Slidell. The crabs are at 240 degrees Fahrenheit when they come out of the boiler. | Legislators were told the crab industry wants to allay the fears after the hurricane that fishing waters in Lake Pontchartrain and all along the Louisiana coast would be unhealthful. Bourgeois said that sampling of both water and tissue "was conducted by a whole host of state and federal agencies and to date nothing has been found beyond normal background levels." Louisiana blue crabs are safe to eat, he said. | State House and Senate Natural Resource Committee members got a look at the senior Darby's soft-shell shedding house in the Salt Bayou area on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Darby explained the life cycle of the blue crab and how molting crabs are captured. Blue crabs grow rapidly and molt or shed their outer shells for growth 20-21 times during their lifespan of about 18 months. After shedding, crabs remain in the soft-shell stage only for a few hours so Roy Darby Sr. said the premolt, "buster," crabs must be checked every three hours, day and night. The lawmakers also watched cooking, picking and packaging operations at Pontchartrain Blue Crabs Inc., 38327 Salt Bayou Road, Slidell. | 
Maria Jesus, right, checks crabmeat for shells before she packages it into 1-pound tubs inside the Pontchartrain Blue Crabs Inc. production facility in Slidell |
Schexnayder said Gary Bauer, owner of Pontchartrain Blue Crabs Inc., "is one of the miracle recovery stories in that area." After Hurricane Katrina, water stood 18 feet deep where the crab processor plant was. Bauer found most of his plant in "a big heap," and except for some salvaged pilings, the facility is mostly new. Two giant ice containers were found 5 miles away. | "I don't know of anyone in the crab industry that was affected as bad as he was and is back in business today," Schexnayder marveled. "Without the processor-buyer sector of the market, the fisherman couldn't be back in. He is critical to the crabs coming back to our plates." "I rebuilt as soon as possible to keep my workers," Bauer said. "Each year it gets more difficult to get government permission to bring in laborers" from Mexico. He said he lost a lot of his Vietnamese workers, who evacuated to Atlanta and are now slowly coming back. | 
Bauer | "We built all of our refrigeration and mechanics above the water line" in anticipation of the next storm, he said. Seventy-five percent of the crabs Pontchartrain Blue Crabs buys goes out of state, Bauer said. From April through most of August, the demand is high for Louisiana No. 1 grade crabs, which are fat, healthy male crabs more than 6 inches long, he said, and 99 percent of the live No. 1 males shipped by the company go to the East Coast.
He added that 70 to 80 percent of the crabs sold in the Chesapeake Bay area - traditionally a top crab producing area - are Louisiana blue crabs. "The estuary system there lost its grass," he added. In the winter, he ships a lot of female crabs to the Asian market in California. That market prefers crabs with eggs but "it is Illegal to take female crabs in the egg or berry stage. I don't buy under sizes (a legal catch must be at least 5 inches in length) or berry-stage crabs."
Medium-size males and females are classified as No. 2s and smaller No. 3 crabs are sent through the plant. "Normally No. 1s and No. 2s are sold whole, but if sales are slow, they go through the plant, too." He said depending on the weight of the crabs, it takes 6 to 10 crabs to produce 1 pound of crabmeat. He sells both fresh and pasteurized crabmeat. If a pasteurized container is kept refrigerated at below 40 degrees, it will last one year, he said. Fresh crabmeat has a shelf life for customers of 10 to 14 days. "Blue crabs are very complex, but the bottom line is its population is stable in Louisiana," Bourgeois, the Wildlife and Fisheries biologist, told the state lawmakers. However, he said, the industry still faces hurdles meeting the challenges of labor, lack of infrastructure, price stabilization, operating costs and assuring the public the crabs are still as good as they've always been - and all of that will take time.
Courtesy of The Advocate
By Cheramie Sonnier
Assistant food editor
Advocate staff photos by Emily Schwarze |
