Southern Living...

THESE SISTERS ARE ANYTHING BUT CRABBY

“Skill, hard work and infinite patience are required to hold the crabs in “floats”
or pens until they moult, and successfully bring them live to market.”
--Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay
William W. Warner

Head down to Virginia’s Urbanna waterfront most any afternoon spring to fall (except Sunday, of course) and you’re liable to link up with two ladies who are anything but crabby. Thought to be the only females in the world commercially licensed to catch blue crabs, sisters Beatrice Taylor and Catherine Via can quickly make any visitor feel welcome at Payne’s Crab House.

“There’s been a crab house right here on Urbanna Creek since the 1880s, when J.W. Hurley & Son Seafood was founded,” says Catherine. Catherine says Boyd Hurley and his father ran it until the 1950s, when it was taken over by their father, who had brought the family over from Tangier Island in 1933. Beatrice and Catherine, who grew up crabbing with their father and other relatives, took over the business when their ‘Daddy’ died of a heart attack in 1977, while crabbing on his beloved Chesapeake Bay.

The always-smiling sisters specialize in soft-shell crabs, which are blue crabs in their moulted states. Soft-shells, called ‘peelers’ by locals, have become a delicacy in many southern homes and restaurants, thanks to their sweet taste and tender texture.

PULLING POTS

Though visitors are welcome anytime, the day starts very early for the sisters. Beatrice typically heads out on her boat right around sunrise, with recently cleaned peeler pots often piled high all around her as she makes her way out to her ‘runs’ of pots in the nearby Rappahannock River.

Of the early start and hard work, 60-year-old Beatrice says, “I simply never tire of being out on the water, whether I catch crabs or not.” She laughs, adding, “Of course, it’s somehow easier to pull up pots when they have some peelers in them!”

She typically has more than 125 pots in the water during the busiest runs of soft-shell crabs, pulling each pot up by hand from the river floor every morning, six days a week, from spring to fall. She just smiles and pulls up another peeler pot when someone tells her that these figures mean at least 3,500 crab-laden (she hopes) pots pulled out of the river each season.

Female soft-shell crabs are typically drawn to the pots by male crabs that Beatrice places in each of the traps (she often gives them names of handsome actors). These ‘jimmies’ have proven to draw in more females and are especially helpful during mating periods right after full moons. Other peelers, both male and female, make their way into the pots looking for shelter to moult in peace.

A typical mid-summer day on the river might yield 50 to 100 peeler crabs (those ready to moult), as well as a sprinkling of large blue hard-shell crabs that the sisters also sell. However, once or twice each spring, there’s usually a two- or three-week period when moulting kicks into high gear, with Beatrice’s take typically coming in at two or three times her normal day. Locals call this a ‘rush’ and Beatrice says the timing seems to be a combination of water temperature, moon cycles, and some sort of crab communication. In any case, it’s a great time to be a crabber (though the sisters sincerely and emphatically state that it’s always a good time to do what they do).

CALLINECTES SAPIDUS

The blue crab (callinectes sapidus) is big business in the Chesapeake Bay, into which Urbanna Creek and the Rappahannock River feed. In fact, thanks to crabs and other marine life, Virginia is the third largest producer of marine products in the nation (behind just Alaska and Louisiana).

It’s thought that between 150 and 250 million blue crabs come out of the Bay each year. Soft-shells make up just a fraction of this number, but about 95% of the nation’s soft-shells are from the Chesapeake.

Competition from other regions of the U.S. and several foreign countries, as well as sometimes smaller crab harvests, have somewhat lessened the impact of crabbing in the region. However, for people like Beatrice and Catherine, it’s much more than a business. It’s a way of life that they have pursued smilingly in the wake of watermen like their father and those before him.

SOFT-SHELLS FOR SALE

By mid-day, Beatrice is usually back at Payne’s Crab House, where 72-year-old Catherine has been working with more than two dozen ‘crab floats’ (also since sunrise). The sisters swear the hard work keeps them both feeling (and looking) much younger than their years.

The floats are basically holding tanks for caught crabs, as the sisters wait for the them to moult so they can neatly pack them for sale (along with many regular local customers, the sisters’ soft-shells are popular with many restaurant chefs). The crabs in the floats are in various states of moulting, ranging from ‘green’ (just starting to moult) to ‘ripe’ (ready to moult).

From decades of intimate handling, Catherine and Beatrice can tell in an instant where a crab stands on the moulting front. Crabs may moult a half-dozen times or more as they grow (they typically live one to three years), with each successive moulting taking longer as they get larger.

As the crabs moult, the sisters fish them out of the floats with nets and line them up live in special transportation boxes. Then they put them in cold storage until the trucks or lucky visitors arrive to whisk them off for eventual dining pleasure, perhaps just later that night.

You can get a great soft-shell sandwich or platter just up the street at popular Shucker’s Restaurant. But there’s something special about buying soft-shells right at Payne’s Crab House, where the sisters’ smiles are almost as memorable as that first bite of a perfectly prepared soft-shell crab.

SOFT-SHELL CRAB SANDWICH RECIPE

Catherine Via uses this simple soft-shell sandwich recipe at home and during the Urbanna Oyster Festival (held the first full weekend in November), when hundreds are served at Payne’s Crab House.

-Clean crab (basically, cut eyes and gills, and remove the ‘apron’). Most seafood stores will do this for customers.

-Rinse.

-Mix flour and Old Bay to taste.

-Dredge crab in flour and shake off any major excess.

-Heat a small amount of vegetable oil over medium heat in a frying pan (Beatrice say about a 1/2” or less should do it--this is not deep frying).

-Cook until brown and crispy on each side.

-Serve on sandwich bread, with toppings and sauces of choice (Beatrice and Catherine prefer them plain, with nothing to distract from the taste of fresh soft-shell crab).