The oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico may have pinched the supply of big Louisiana blue crabs that some Maryland restaurants rely upon, but there's apparently been no shortage of crustaceans to steam, crack and pick this summer, as the Chesapeake Bay has produced its best harvest in years.
"We didn't need Louisiana crabs this year," said Larry W. Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. "We've got so many crabs now we can't sell them."
That's in part because "demand has been iffy" at times, said Jack Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton, a long-time crabmeat processing business in Cambridge. "Right now we've got more crabs than we need," he said, and companies like his have dropped the prices paid to watermen to as low as $12 per bushel for female crabs.
Crab houses and seafood restaurants — especially those that serve steamed crabs year-round — have come to depend upon the Gulf for their supply. Bay crabs normally don't show up in significant numbers until summer, and in recent years the Chesapeake fishery has fallen on hard times, with harvests sliding to a record low in 2007.
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