Florida stone crabs are found in southwestern Florida, down in the Keys and all along the Gulf of Mexico coast. When Joe Weiss first started serving them, they were plentiful in Miami, but the waters were dredged as Miami boomed in the 1920's and the stone crabs moved south.
Crab fishing requires back-breaking labor.
Crabbers head out in boats well before dawn. Their boats are loaded with a thousand pounds of fresh fish heads for bait, because stone crabs are very particular. They can fish anywhere from a mile offshore to ninety miles out, where the water is ninety feet deep. You pull the first trap, which is connected to the buoy by eighty or ninety feet of rope. Each trap can hold ten or twelve crabs.