Most use crab pots, 2-foot cubes of chicken wire on rebar frames, easy for crabs to enter but difficult to leave. The island is single-minded in its mission. Aside from widows and retirees, the schoolteachers, a few merchants and three innkeepers, all of Tangier relies on the blue crab for its daily bread. But how long it will last, no one can say. The species' spawning stock may be in trouble.
Scientists worry that adult crabs seem to be getting smaller, too.