One claw, and the crab goes back alive.
It is the part of this fishery most people have never heard, and it is the reason there is a season at all. The animal is a crop rather than a catch.
01
The trap comes up
Wood-and-wire traps on a line, pulled every four or five days through the season. A trap holds whatever walked in — most of it is not stone crab and goes straight back.
02
The claw is measured before anything else
Two and seven-eighths inches from the elbow to the tip of the immovable finger. Under that it goes back with the crab, whatever else is true about the day.
03
One claw, and the crab goes back alive
We take one and leave one, which is more conservative than the law allows, because a crab with one claw can still feed itself and a crab with none cannot. The animal is returned to the water within minutes of coming aboard.
04
It grows the claw back
Over roughly two moults — about eighteen months to something close to full size. That is the whole basis of the fishery: the animal is a renewable crop rather than a catch.
05
Cooked on the dock the day it lands
Stone crab is cooked before it is sold, always — the meat sticks to the shell otherwise and you cannot get it out. Ours goes into the pot on the dock, the same day, and is chilled straight after.
The measurement
- Legal minimum
- 2 7/8 inches, elbow to the tip of the immovable finger
- What we do
- We take one claw and leave one. The law permits both under conditions; we do not.
PLACEHOLDER: confirm — the current state minimum and the two-claw rules change between seasons and should be checked against the FWC regulations for the season in question before this page goes live.