What follows here is our monthly newsletter, which we'll try to update about the first of each month. This page will contain various facts, figures and interesting stories about fresh Gulf of Mexico seafood, and we'll present our monthly recipe contest winner, the best recipe we recieve each month wins a five pound fillet selection of fresh seafood. This month, our feature story is on the Stone Crab and the claws that we offer. These tasty little critters are a personal favorite of mine, and will be of yours too. The crabs are caught off a rocky bottom, where they find plenty of good hiding places among the stones, hence their name.
Stone crabs eat shrimp, oysters, clams, or just about anything else they can get their claws on.
The power of the claws is unbelievable, they can crush an oyster shell like a grape. Sometimes while harvesting them, we get nipped, it's not a pleasant experience. The crabs are caught in square traps baited with dead fish, cat food or butcher scraps, and an average fisherman will put out 1,500 traps for the season, pulling in about 300 traps a day. Boats that fish the stone crabs are equipped with hydraulic hoists to help lift the 50 pound traps on board. Crabs are removed from the traps and put in a wooden box covered with a tarp.