Crabbing 101: Part II

Today's lesson in crabbing--as told by Chesapeake Bay Woman, who knows next to nothing about crabbing other than she loves to observe and take pictures of it--will review the very important process of pulling the pots into the boat and ushering the reluctant crabs out of the pot into their new home, otherwise known as a basket.

The Essential Automatic Crab Pot Puller Upper

As I mentioned in the previous post, they used to pull the crab pots in by hand, which had to have been back breaking work.  Although it's still back breaking work, at least there's the handy dandy Automatic Crab Pot Puller Upper to the rescue, making the chore of pulling up pots so much easier.

The beauty of a Chesapeake Bay Woman blog post about crabbing is only here will you see technical terms such as Automatic Crab Pot Puller Upper flaunted with utter and complete confidence. You won't find that term used anywhere else. By anyone else. By golly. We're special here in CBW-land. We're not quite the "riding the short bus" special, but we're hovering in that general vicinity.


(Not that there's anything wrong with people who ride the short bus.)

Once the Crab Pot Puller Upper has done its duty, Johnny fiddles with the pot, and then begins the very important, sometimes arduous, process of evicting the crabs from their previous abode.

And this process of evicting crabs from their crab pot home
is called shaking.

Don't go looking in any books for the term.

Or googling the technique.

Just trust me on this.

There's a whole lotta shakin' going on.

Shake, shake, shake.

Shake, shake, shake.

That of course reminds me of this song.  A little known fact: KC and the Sunshine Band played at my company's Christmas party in downtown DC back in the 1990s. It was a very large company, there were thousands of people there, and we were only one division of the global firm (meaning they had the dollars to spare). Anyway, they didn't tell us in advance who was providing the entertainment. When they made the announcement at the party, I let out a scream and sprinted to the stage, hurdling over tables and discarding my plate of jumbo shrimp like a Frisbee in the process.  


See? If you were reading about crabbing in some book, or anywhere else, you'd never hear about KC and the Sunshine Band. 


Only here.

But we aren't talking about songs.

Or even jumbo shrimp.

We're talking about crabs and their journey from an underwater home

to your newspaper-lined picnic table

set with multiple large tins

of Old Bay Seasoning.

Here's the cute little wooden lid I referenced in the previous post.

After the crabs are shaken loose from the pots, a sorting process occurs; however, since CBW was more focused on other things, such as a basket lid which she somehow construed as "cute," and shake-shake-shake songs going through her head, she cannot comment on that sorting process.

Not at this time, anyway.

Once a basket is filled to the level of overflowing it then receives the cute lid. The basket is then tossed to the side where it waits patiently to be transferred to the dock.

This concludes today's lesson in 1970s music crabbing.

More photos from this journey will go up later in the week.

Thank you for your patience attention. Have a great day.