Harvesting stone crabs is hard work, big business

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.

“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 in Matlacha, who gets the claws fresh, cooks them, chills them and sells them to go. “They’re very succulent. They’re very, very meaty.”

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.

“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 blond from the scorching sun.

Paul Gladding checks one of his stone crab traps and rebaits it with a pig’s foot, left. 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 have exploded into a $20 million seasonal industry for crabbers in Florida — that number is before they are sold by wholesalers or served 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.

The object of everyone’s desire during stone crab season, a perfect specimen freshly plucked from the Gulf. 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.

“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 longhandled hook to grab one of his colorcoded 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 snapped off their claws, 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. 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, the 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. The greatest dockside value in recent years was in 2000, when $28.3 million worth was sold by crabbers.

“Certainly, the economy is a factor and availability can also be a factor,” said Grant Phelan, director of operations for Pincher’s Crab Shack restaurants, which is a part of Island Crab Co. There are seven Pincher’s locations from Sarasota to Naples.

Every October, the promise of stone crab claws draws a crowd of diners, who very well may be enjoying a claw Mr. Gladding caught. Almost every day during season, he sells his claws to Island Crab Co. Currently, he gets about $7 per pound, depending on the size of the claw.

“Each restaurant will have like 10 tables waiting for the crabs to arrive on that first day of stone crab season,” said Mr. Phelan.

Diners at Pincher’s seven locations combined can go through 2,000 pounds of stone crab claws on a busy weekend day. 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. Meltz of Andy’s Island Seafood sells the claws at market prices to go, now about $14 per pound for mediums, $18 for large and $24 for jumbo.

Mr. Gladding has been there for the highs and lows of crab trapping and selling.

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. Mr. Gladding 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.

His catch on Thursday, a disappointing one, was enough to cover his daily expenses (about $100) and pay him around $50. 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. 