Crabs - Species and Sex

Species

Crabs are decapod (10 legged) crustaceans with exoskeletons (outer shells).  “True crabs” have 5 pairs of legs and the foremost pair are claws that aren’t used for movement.  There are 70+ families of ”true crabs” (in the Infraorder “Brachyura”) and Brachyura comprises about 1/2 of the Decapoda order.  The Decapoda order includes many species are mistakenly called “crabs” but also includes several other tasty sea treats like lobsters, shrimp, and prawns.  The most notable of the decapods that fall outside Brachyura (and therefore aren’t actually crabs) are King Crabs.

The picture to the right is from Kunstformen der Natur by Ernst Haeckel and represents various forms of Decapoda.

Side note: a company called Dover Pictorial Archives sells a paperback version of this book, as well as some CD-ROMs with royalty free clipart from the same plates.  I’ve seen both the paperback and CD-ROMs at Barnes and Noble.  Some PNG (with alpha channels!) versions of a few of these are available online, too.  These drawings are otherworldly and definately worth a look.

Sex

The sex of a crab is generally determined by comparing the size of the abdomen.  Male crabs are larger and tend to have a narrower abdomen.  Crab’s abdomen (aka. “that weird flap attached to the very back of their shell”) are tucked under the body (cephalothorax aka. “the flat belly part, on the bottom of the crab”).  The abdomen contains a large number of swimming legs (pleopods or swimmerets).  Female crabs brood eggs amongst their pleopods.  This accounts for the broader/larger abdomen.  Kat mentioned that she learned that male Dungeness are “Empire State Building” and females are “state capitol building.”  Many crab gauges (more in a later post) have diagrams that highlight the visual differences between sexes.  This difference is remarkably important, as fishing the females of some crab species is illegal.

A quick note on size, as it relates to sex: if you have the good fortune of catching a Dungeness Crab of legal size, you probably have a male.  “…female Dungeness crabs exceeding the minimum legal size of males usually account for less than 5% of mature adult female crabs…” (citation).  When in doubt, though, let it go.  The law (Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act - 104-297, sec. 112(d), M-S Act SS 306 note), passed in 1856, delegated jurisdiction for management of Dungeness to California, Oregon and Washington to protect the sustainability of the species.  Fishing female crabs inhibits the species ability to reproduce and risks the sport.

As I’m fascinated by crab reproduction, I’m sure I have a NSFW Crab Hoop post in my future.

Off Topic: Introductions

I thought I’d take an opportunity to post a few introductions around here.  I’m Katherine, Kat for short and that handsome fellow is Bengt. We started crabhoop.com together as a fun little project.  You see, we can both be a little lazy but really enjoy getting outside and just doing stuff.  So we figure that crabhoop.com will help motivate us by giving us an excuse to go out and do things.  Really, it makes sense to us.

We both work in technology in the San Francisco South Bay Area but we are Pacific Northwest natives (me from Oregon, him from Idaho).  A little inclement weather doesn’t phase us too much to say the least.  In my spare time I paint, read, garden, and lead a Girl Scout troop of six 13 year olds.  Together we enjoying camping and cooking.  Bengt tends to be pretty busy, but when he has time he spends his spare time in geeky pursuits like RC cars and robots.  I’ve recently introduced him to one of my hobbies, Burning Man, so we’ll have to wait and see what kind of EL-wire, LED enhanced technologically fasinating projects he’ll come up with that.  We both hope, in general, to get out and do more camping, fishing, hiking, backpacking, skiing/snowboarding, rock climbing, and most importantly crabbing.  We live in an amazingly beautiful area that has so much to offer it’s a shame not to take advantage of it.  We are both fans of local, seasonal produce (ideally organic) and are big fans of local, sustainably farmed meat sources.  We are also rather keen on “real” foods, but aren’t religious about any of it.

I’m a proud “mom” to a handful of animals, including Gui and Bugaboo my two cats, Sam a betta  fish, and Sushi a moderate-sized goldfish.  Bugaboo is my cancer surviving cat and has her own website www.missbugaboo.com.  Gui was a feral rescue that was headed for the Humane Society if no one took him from the business office that found him.  I brought him home a year and a half ago consoling myself that if it didn’t work out that I’d at least tried and would take him myself.  Bugaboo was in the middle or radiation treatments when Gui happened in my life and I wasn’t sure I could cope with bottle feeding a kitten and 4 day a week radiation treatments including 2 hour round trip commutes.  Of course, even though he is certainly a challenge at times and, not to mention, a *very* big boy I’ve had him ever since.  His most favorite person by far is Bengt though.  He only tolerates me to keep Bengt happy.

Bengt is a real dad to two lovely little girls that live back in Idaho as well as Blue a bird (oh god, I can’t remember what kind!?) and Harry a betta fish.

Recipe: Crab Ravioli

• 1/2 a batch of Basic Pasta Dough (at the bottom of this post)
• Meat from one 2lb dungeness crab
• 3 oz Parmesean Reggiano Cheese, shredded
• 3 tablespoons Green Onions, Chopped
• 1 egg

DIRECTIONS:

Lightly flour a work surface, ideally wood.  Cut the pasta down in half, and those halves in half, and so on until you have 18 small pieces.  Set aside all of the pieces you aren’t working with and cover with a damp towel.

In a bowl mix, the crab meat, green onions, and cheese together with a fork.

In a small bowl lightly beat the egg until it is uniform in color to form an egg wash.

Take your first piece of pasta dough and roll it.  Lightly flour it as needed to keep it from sticking, but don’t over flour.  Between each roll, rotate and flip the dough to keep it relatively circular.  When the dough is thin, but not yet becoming translucent put a tablespoon of the crab meat mixture just off to one side of the center.  Don’t overfill!

Use your finger to apply a light line of egg wash on the edge of half the pasta dough and fold the pasta over the mixture.  Egg wash adheres to pasta not more egg wash so make sure you fold the dry pasta to the egg washed pasta.  Start at one end and work the air bubbles out of the pasta until you come to the other side.  Press down on the crab mixture to ensure all of the air bubbles are out and then press the last portion of the pasta together.  Air bubbles will cause the pasta to expand in the hot water and probably burst.

Set aside your first ravioli and repeat the same method until you have rolled, filled, and sealed all of the pasta pieces.

If you are concerned about the appearance of your ravioli you can use a bisquit or cookie cutter to make the shape very uniform.  I don’t care about the exact shape and also don’t care to waste the pasta that gets trimmed off.

To store the ravioli for a short time, just separate them with parchment paper and store in a plastic bag in the refridgerator.  To store them long term, lay them out on a baking sheet and place in the freezer.  Once frozen you can put them in a plastic bag and store in the freezer.

To cook simply add the pasta (fresh or frozen) to boiling water and cook to your desired consistency.

BASIC PASTA DOUGH:

You can really use just about any recipe, but I happened to have used the ratio of:

• 3 cups All-purpose Flour
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1 teaspoon Olive Oil
• 3 tablespoons Water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

You can use the “well method”, a food processor, or a mixer with a dough hook.  I’ve had spotty success with each method and in this particular case I started with the food processor but it didn’t really set well so we kneaded it primarily by hand.  Once it’s all incorporated, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.  I stash mine in the fridge if I’m not going to deal with it right away, but let it come up to room temperature before trying to roll it.

Recipe: Crab and Lobster Bisque*

LOBSTER STOCK INGREDIENTS:

• 1 - 2lb Live Dungeness Crab
• As many discarded shells and bodies from lobsters or crabs that you may have around, smashed (we had shells from a 5lb lobster, a 1lb dungeness, and 1lb of Alaskan king crab legs)
• 15 cups of Water
• 6 to 8 Carrots, chopped
• 6 to 8 Celery Stalks, chopped
• 1 medium White Onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil

CRAB AND LOBSTER BISQUE INGREDIENTS:

• 4 cups Lobster Stock
• 4 tablespoons Flour 
• 4 tablespoons Butter
• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 1/4 cup Dry Sherry
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/2 tsp. Cayenne Pepper (or to taste)
• 1/2 cup (or to preference) Cooked Lobster and/or Crab Meat

LOBSTER STOCK DIRECTIONS: 

Set about 15 cups of water to boil in a large stock pot. 

Once at a rolling boil add the live dungeness, cover, and let the water return to a boil.  Turn the heat down to medium-high to help prevent boil over and let cook for 15 minutes. 

Remove the cooked crab to cool and set aside the liquid from boiling the crab.  At this point we had about 13 cups of liquid left.  You can clean and use the shells from the dungeness you just cooked for the next part of your stock and save the meat for bisque or other purposes.  We happened to set aside the shells for future stock and the meat for crab ravioli since we already had a large stash of shells from previous meals.

In a clean stock pot add the carrots, celery, onion, olive oil, and the  smashed shells uncovered at medium-high heat.  Mix thoroughly and allow the vegetable to soften a little (5-10 minutes depending on the depth of your stock pot).

Add 2 cups of the cooking liquid from boiling the crab and let come to a soft boil for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Add the remaining cooking liquid and let simmer for as long as you have patience for, stirring occasionally.  I think we let our’s go for at least an hour until the liquid was reduced down by about half to about 5 cups.

Strain the contents of the pot through a sieve and/or cheese cloth and discard the solids.

You can use your lobster stock for bisque, lobster sauces, or anything where you want some serious seafood flavor.

CRAB AND LOBSTER BISQUE DIRECTIONS:

In a soup or stock pot on medium heat, add the 4 tablespoons butter and begin to melt. Add the flour and whisk to form a roux. Turn heat down to medium and continue to whisk until roux becomes light brown, only takes a few minutes.

Slowly add the hot lobster stock to the roux mixture, whisking constantly to ensure that the mixture remains smooth. 

Add the cream, sherry, Worcestershire Sauce, cayenne pepper, and lobster and/or crab meat and simmer an additional 5 minutes.  We probably added a full cup of chopped lobster and crab meat to our’s, but we are fiends like that.

* DISCLAIMER:  I very rarely measure or time things when I cook.  I use recipes that exist and twist and combine them to my own evil purposes.  My recipes are just a guideline and you can adjust and play with it to get it to meet your personal tastes or preferences.  Additionally I cook on an electric stove with almost exclusively enameled or unenameled cast iron.  You may need to increase or otherwise adjust the cooking temperatures to meet the needs of your cook top and cookware.

We happened to serve our bisque with some sort of tropical concoction.  I had purchased a pineapple because I’d read about growing your own from the discarded top (I garden in my spare time as well).  So we just threw the pineapple (less the skin and core) in to our new food processor and took it for a whirl.  We then added half the pineapple puree, a 1/2 cup or so of coconut milk, two trays of ice cubes, and a very generous dose of Pyrat rum to the blender and took it for a whirl again.  We then mixed in the remaining pineapple puree and gleefully guzzled with the bisque and a pirate movie.

We still have pasta dough resting in the fridge and the crab meat from the 2 lb dungeness we used to boil to get the great base for the stock so there will very likely be some crab ravioli experimentation in the very near future.

Pacifica Pier

We made our first venture out crabbing recently.  After finding a disappointing amount of information online for sport crabbing in the San Francisco bay area we decided to start this site.  It’s kind of a blog, and hopefully it will also kind of be a place for crabbing information.  For now it’s just kind of what it is.  Anyway, someone on LiveJournal referred us to an online article from 1995 that mentioned a couple piers for Dungeness Crabs which is what we were looking for.  I’ve only been rock crabbing in the bay at Fort Baker Pier in the past.  One of the ones mentioned by the article was Pacifica Pier in, you guessed it, Pacifica! 

So we grabbed the crab hoop we’d purchased in Bodega, drilled some holes in one of two plastic bins I had from camping, and headed off to pick up some bait, line, a bait cage, and some leather work gloves.  I had learned during my rock crab excursions that those fellows are much more flexible than you might imagine and a claw pinch can leave a nice mark.  I wasn’t going near any of them with out some sturdy gloves.  We started off visiting the grocery store for some chicken wings as bait.  Then we headed to the West Marine in Mountain View only to discover that they had no bait cages and seemed generally quite confused.  They did have the line and a crab gauge to replace the one we purchased in Bodega that went mysteriously missing.  Since we hadn’t found a bait cage and still needed work gloves we headed on to Home Depot.  We ended up purchasing some 1-inch fencing material to build our own bait cage and some leather work gloves.  We headed off for the pier not quite knowing what to expect.

The pier was busy, but not completely crowded.  Most folks were fishing and a few were trying to use crab snares.  A couple of the people fishing had dropped in crab hoops as kind of an after thought, but since  they were rarely pulling them up I had trouble seeing how they could be expecting to catch much.

First off we just zip-tied the chicken wings to the bottom of the crab hoop in an effort to get it in the water quickly and take stock of the situation.  Bengt set about meticulously making a bait cage and I watched as a pair of sea lions happily chased the crab hoops to the floor of the ocean.  The pier was much higher than we expected.  We had brought 50 feet of line and quickly realized that didn’t quite get us to the floor and we were at the mid-point on the pier.  I imagine it was even deeper at the end.  Fortunately we had brought some extra line for pulling water up from the ocean in the event that we had to keep some crabs moist.  We used the end of it to tie off the crab hoop’s line to one of the concrete benches we had parked ourselves on.

We watched some of the other crabbers (is that a word?) and didn’t see anyone pulling  much of anything up, crab or otherwise, so we were coming to terms with the fact that we were unlikely to see much that day.  We eventually pulled up some very under-sized crabs, but it was at least reassurance that our set up worked and we had to be doing something sort of right.  The little guys got tossed back in and we actually were feeling kind of good considering some of the folks that had been there for the afternoon were starting to head home empty handed.  I will say, fishing people are generally pretty friendly.  A few are a little inappropriately loud due to  excess beer consumption, but all seemed good natured.

We had thought we were likely the last people that were going to arrive at the pier that day since the sun was starting to drop a little, but new groups, particularly 20-somethings, seemed to continue to arrive into the late afternoon.  We continued to see no yield for our efforts but amused ourselves watching the local wildlife.  We repeatedly saw two dorsal fins playing around past the breaks to the left of the pier (if you are looking out at the ocean).  I’m not quite sure what they are, but they surfaced pretty frequently and consistently in the area.  Bengt suspects it was some type of mammal, but I haven’t located much information about what types would be seen that easily from the coast.  I guess I’ve always thought you needed binoculars to whale watch.

We decided to cast the hoop one more time before heading back home.  We’d decided that a  trip to a seafood restaurant on our way home would soothe our seafood lust even if we hadn’t caught anything.  On our last cast we finally pulled up a legal dungeness!  Our first ever!  We placed it in our crab transport device: two plastic tubs, the top one with holes drilled in it and lined with newspaper.  A lesson learned from my first crabbing trip where our crabs all died because we just put them in a regular bucket of water.  Oops!  We nestled our prize safely under newspapers and generously soaked the papers with sea water, snapped on the lid and headed down the pier.  We got a few admiring comments from other folks on the pier since it was one of the few dungies that anyone had caught that day.  Since we’d only caught the one small dungie we kept to our seafood dinner plans and then headed home.  Bengt cooked and cleaned our catch and we stashed in in the freezer, along with the carcass of a our 5lb valentines lobster, for making bisque.  I haven’t tried making bisque before so I’ll have to let you know how that goes.