Harvesting stone crabs is hard work, big business

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Above: Paul Gladding, a Pine Island crab trapper with one of the stone crabs he catches daily in the Gulf. Below: T.B., a delivery driver for Andy’s Island Seafood in Matlacha, with crab claws for sale at the Saturday morning GreenMarket at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers. Paul Gladding harvests stone crab claws, a delicacy brought up almost exclusively from waters off the coast of South Florida. In spite of a fractured and swollen wrist from a recent slip on his boat — and the fact that Mr. Gladding, 62, could retire comfortably — he went to work on Thursday before sunrise, as usual.

Now, just two weeks into the sevenmonth stone crab season that began Oct. 15, people are clamoring for the claws that Mr. Gladding and other commercial fishermen bring to dinner tables. They are all the more desirable for their seasonality, traditionally served with homemade mustard sauce and drawn butter.

“All our customers were waiting for Oct. 15,” said Kelly Beall, owner of Peace River Seafood in Punta Gorda, a fishery and restaurant that sells all manner of fresh, local seafood. “It’s like an event. They’re so excited.”

Stone crab claw distributors buy from commercial fishermen who are private contractors, like Mr. Gladding. In the case of Peace River, Ms. Beall’s husband is one of the six crabbers she gets stone crab claws from. Like other operations, they cook and chill the claws, then sell them to diners or to go.

Between the crabbing and the restaurant, the couple spends long days bringing the lucrative claws to hungry Southwest Floridians.

“(Jimmy) works crazy long hours because he goes out early in the morning and then comes to the fishhouse and helps close this place down,” Ms. Beall said. The restaurant closes at 8 p.m.

HOWIE GRACE/ FLORIDA WEEKLY Kelly Beall, owner of Peace River Seafood in Punta Gorda, presents a platter of stone crab claws, harvested on opening day. “It makes for a long day, but we love it.”

At Pincher’s Crab Shack restaurants, which have seven locations from Naples to Sarasota, diners can go through 2,000 pounds of claws on a busy weekend day, said Grant Phelan, director of operations.

“I’ll have people call me up every year and say I want so many pounds of stone crab claws,” said Andy Meltz, owner of Andy’s Island Seafood on Matlacha, who sells up to 60 pounds of claws to go every week. “They’re very succulent. They’re very, very meaty.”

Harvest

In the faint, hopeful glow of pre-dawn light, Mr. Gladding begins to gather the daily harvest, caught in traps sitting like milk crates on the ocean floor. He stepped from his backyard in Bokeelia into the Spartan crab boat he built three decades ago, Lucky Lady, and pointed her out toward the Gulf of Mexico.

EVAN WILLIAMS/FLORIDA WEEKLY The object of everyone’s desire during stone crab season, a perfect specimen freshly plucked from the Gulf. “You have to love the work number one,” he said.

Mr. Gladding is grizzled after four decades of such labor. He is tanned and blue-eyed, with cliff-like shoulders and huge, rough hands, two fingers on one of them half-gone from some long-ago accident. His hair is bleached blonde.

He worked relentlessly through the choppy waters of a cloudy morning — hard, rhythmic labor — until the sky and sea both glared with naked afternoon sunlight. Then he worked some more. Mr. Gladding started harvesting the crabs in 1970 in Key West, but they weren’t popular then.

“Nobody wanted them,” he said. “I peddled them for the raw bars and (other local places).”

Since then, they exploded into a $20 million and up seasonal industry for crabbers in Florida — that number is before they are sold by wholesalers or by a waiter. Last year, the average dockside price for claws in Florida was $6.14 per pound, down from a recent high of nearly $10 per pound in 2006, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Dockside prices so far this season are hovering just above $6 per pound, not as much as most recent years. And so far this year the haul hasn’t been as plentiful. Most crabbers say that’s because the water is too clear. Stone crabs are less likely to be up walking around into traps unless cold weather fronts muddy up the water, helping them hide from predators. Octopus are one the stone crabs primary enemies.

“It’s pretty early to tell but we’re off to kind of a slow start,” said Jeff Haugland, who runs Island Crab Company in St. James City, a major wholesale and retail distributer of stone crab claws. “It’s like going out fishing. Some days they bite.”

Working by himself, Mr. Gladding brought in 150 pounds last week, while a good week yields 600 to 800 pounds of claws. Larger operations can bring in 1,000 pounds per day.

It’s repetitive work. As his boat approached each trap, guided by a GPS system, Mr. Gladding used a long-handled hook to grab one of his color-coded buoys.

Then he wrapped the rope around a motorized pulley system to bring the trap up from the ocean floor and pulled it by hand into the boat. If there were any stone crabs inside, he brought them to his chest to gain the best leverage and snapped off their strong claws like a farmer picking an ear of corn. Then he measured to make sure they were the legal 2¾ inches long and tossed them in a bucket of saltwater.

He rebaits the trap with a pig foot and throws the rest of the crab back in the sea where it can regrow its claws. With no claws, about 25 percent of stone crabs thrown back in the water survive.

“You can take both claws as long as they’re both legal (size),” Ms. Beall of Peace River Seafood said. “They don’t need the claws to eat, only for defense.”

Although most stone crab claws are harvested south of Sarasota and Fort Lauderdale, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the crabs may be found in waters along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts as far north as South Carolina.

Big business

Last year, a recession may have been the reason the pricey delicacy, sold to consumers for $14 per pound and up, had a lower value than most recent years.

Statewide, the total value of stone crab claws sold dockside, before being sold at restaurants or to go, came to $18.9 million — the lowest statewide average since 1994, when $18.7 million worth of stone crab claws were sold. The greatest dockside value in recent years was in 2000, when $28.3 million worth was sold by crabbers, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Certainly the economy is a factor and availability can also be a factor,” said Mr. Phelan of Pincher’s Crab Shack.

Stone crab claw dinners at Pincher’s restaurant go for $20 to $30 along with two side dishes, depending on market price and the size of the claw you get.

Southwest Florida crabbers haul hundreds of thousands of pounds of stone crab claws every year. Lee County crabbers harvested 154,467 pounds of stone crab claws in 2008. Collier County crabbers harvested 621,064 pounds. Charlotte County crabbers harvested 28,874 pounds.

Mr. Gladding’s catch on Thursday, a disappointing one, was enough to cover his daily expenses (about $100) and pay him around $50. But he whistled as he worked, undeterred by the shifting luck of his trade.

He lived on a boat in Key West until he was 10, where his father had a boat salvaging business. Then his family moved to Pine Island. He went into the Navy before becoming a crab trapper. He’s also owned three businesses, including a marina and a hotel, but he likes being out on the water more than just about anywhere else. Mr. Gladding looked down at the yellow bucket with about 30 pounds of stone crab claws — the result of that day’s hard work.

“A bad day on the water is better than a good day on land,” he said. 

stone crab statistics

>> In Florida since 2000, the pounds of stone crab claws harvested per year, average dockside value and total value:

YEAR	POUNDS HARVESTED	$PER POUND	TOTAL VALUE
2000	3.4 million	$8.2	$28.3 million
2001	3.3 million	$6.01	$20 million
2002	3.2 million	$7.10	$22.9 million
2003	2.6 million	$8.60	$22.7 million
2004	3 million	$8.80	$26.4 million
2005	2.3million	$9.2	$21.1 million
2006	2.4 million	$10	$24.3 million
2007	3.0 million	$9	$26.5 million
2008	3.1 million	$6.14	$18.9 million

In Florida last year, the total value of stone crab claws sold dockside, before being sold at restaurants or elsewhere, came to $18.86 million — the lowest statewide average since 1994, when $18.67 million worth of stone crab claws were sold.

In 2008, Lee County crabbers harvested 154,467 pounds of stone crab claws. Collier County crabbers harvested 621,064 pounds. Charlotte County crabbers harvested 28,874 pounds.

Source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission