Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

Dead shore crab get washed up by the high tide by the tens and twenties, where they prove irresistable for underage beach combers.

The tideflats are covered with miniature crab. They skitter around the beach, hide under oyster clusters at low tide, and go into attack mode when they sense someone overhead. But they can also be kinda cuddly:

Some of the teensy crabs have huge, Popeye-on-spinach forearms. There are probably several different species of shore crabs, as they’re called, but the most common, both on the beach and on the internet, are Purple Shore Crabs.

These two crab were just, um, minding their own business when they were rudely flipped over and inspected.

The crab at the bottom of this photo is male, the crab at top is female. Notice the difference in the shapes of their abdomens? Male crab have a longer, thinner abdomen; female crab have a shorter, rounder abdomen. They mate in the spring and summer. The process takes several days. For a beautiful description of crab sex go here.

It’s illegal to catch female crab, so all the crab you see on the market are, or should be, males.

These crab are Dungeness crab. Each species of crab is its own special snowflake.

Ingredients:

• Meat from one Dungeness crab, picked
• 1 cup bread crumbs, plus additional for coating
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• ¼ cup minced fresh parsley
• 1 large egg, blended
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp Spike seasoning
• ¼ tsp cayenne
• ¼ tsp dry mustard
• salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, blend together all ingredients except for the crabmeat. Then, once everything is mixed together, stir in the crab meat.

Shape into cakes—this should yield about 6 cakes—the cakes will be very soft. If you have time/energy to put the breadcrumbs into a food processor instead of just cutting them up into squares, it may make the crab cakes firmer.

As you form them, place the cakes on a bed of breadcrumbs and pat breadcrumbs over them. Let them stand for up to one hour in a refrigerator, loosely covered. (Another place to save time if you’re short on it.)

Saute the crab cakes in a mixture of butter and olive oil over moderately high heat for two or three minutes on a side, or until they are browned. Transfer them as they are done to a heated platter. Serve with lemon wedges.

NOTE: If you’re one of those people who are scared of mayonnaise, feel free to reduce the amount of called for in this recipe. This may also make the crab cakes hold together better. Let us know if you have any luck with this.

(Broccoli not included)

The spider crab looks HUGE! And then he goes into a ninja pose.

Spider crabs, from the family Majidae, are also called majid crabs. There are 900 species of majid crab, and some really are huge– the largest species of crab in the world is the Japanese spider crab, which can weigh up to 40 pounds and have a 12 foot leg span. The common or European spider crab, Maja squinado, is fished commercially in the Atlantic. We’ve never eaten spider crab, but hear that it’s delicious. But is it better tasting than Dungeness?

The crab in the video is a Pugettia producta, identifiable by its smooth carapace and 2 pronged rostrum. It sometimes is invaded by a parasitic barnacle, Heterosaccus californicus, which makes the crab sluggish and can cause male crab to become hermaphrodites. When a parasitized crab molts, the barnacle’s reproductive sack pushes out through the crab’s abdomen, killing the crab. You may have seen this in a movie somewhere. We’ll keep our eyes out for a sluggish, hermaphroditic crab with a barnacle egg sack emerging from his abdomen, but we’ll also keep our distance.

Spider crab, shown above, are like Daddy Long Legs… they have a really scary outline, but relatively inefficient pinchers. They might make a mark, but they won’t take off your finger.

Dungeness crab, on the other hand, are super dangerous and more aggressive than a rabid wiener dog. But they’re no match for Jim. Here are some pictures of Jim picking a Dungeness crab up out of a slough:

The crab season in the Canal is open only fitfully and mainly to recreational crabbers. Occasionally the Skokomish Tribe will have a commercial crab opening, but for the most part we buy crab from Westport, on the ocean, or Sequim (pronounced skwim), north of us on the Peninsula, to sell in our retail store.

Dungeness crab bites bleed like crazy. We recommend either being an expert crab handler or using tongs to handle the animals.

We put this sign up after a customer got pinched pretty badly while trying to help himself to the crab. In a bit of irony nearly overlooked in the bloody scuffle following the bite: the customer had announced his intention to pick out his own crab by saying, rather gruffly, “I’ve been handling Dungeness my whole life, missy.”