I can’t pinpoint when my passion for crabbing crept into the realm of obsession. But as I pulled out my crab pot for the umpteenth time and circled my home in search of my favourite meat, I now know I not only love the hunt, but the taste as well.
So far, I’ve tried my hand at crab cakes baked in its own back, stir-fried crab and roe with green peppers, thyme and scallion, curried crab, crab based with garlic and butter, and the sweetness of whole boiled crabs eaten out of its shell with friends and family is tops.
As my children got older, I tried to re-create the can’t-wait-for-night-to-come feeling of crab hunting; flashlights were given to shine under bushes, crutch sticks were cut for practice and sacks were given for hunting once the rainy season started.
It is a fun, free activity, educational, exciting and a great way a family can spend quality time together.
I hope that everyone gets to take their kids crabbing at least once. The joy on their faces the first time they catch a “big” one is contagious, the family experience is a laugh-out-loud adventure. And you hope that they will pass the experience on to their own kids someday.
Crab catching has been a part of the Cayman cultural heritage since yesteryear just like mosquitoes and mangoes. These three just seem to go hand-in-hand when it is crab-catching time.
Crabbing is lots of fun, that is unless you are bitten by one. In order to avoid capture, crabs protect themselves by putting up two defensive claws in front. They can give you a nasty pinch if you are not careful.
Crab catchers relish the excitement and the hunt, while others who have felt the pinch have kept as far away from crabbing as possible.
Crabbing stories
One night, about 30 years ago, my sister Twyla had family visiting from the US and decided to take them crabbing.
Of course, they were ages seven to 12 and we were 13 to 20 at the time.
As children those days, we dared to venture into areas unknown to us like Look Out Pond, and Grass Piece back of Bodden Town, which was then pure wilderness. But these US greenhorns knew nothing about our ferocious mosquitoes, maiden plum and sassy crustaceans.
If you want to get lost in Cayman, go crabbing at night with a bottle torch in an area that you are not familiar with.
“Not having the faintest clue of where we were going with just the Coca-Cola bottle torch lighting the way, we eventually got lost,” recalls Twyla.
“Everyone began to cry, even the US greenhorns, as we realised we were lost and the crabs were all escaping. But cousin William would have nothing of that – after all the trekking, getting lost and escaping poisonous traps, he was taking one crab back home. He reached down, grabbed of one of the fleeing crustaceans – and you know what happened next. The crab flips on its back, sunk its pincher into William’s little finger and latched on to his shirt collar for dear life as William violently tried to shake it loose. That was when the screaming began, fright caught ahold of us and we all started screaming too,” chuckles Twyla as she remembers the incident.
“There was no need to worry. Locals hunt crabs in parties and one was nearby – ‘Wha happen?’ They shouted, ‘We lost and crab bite cousin William finga.’
“‘How you mean you lost? You all standing on the trail.’ ”
Some old-fashioned advice
It’s lots of fun to take children crabbing, but always make sure the crab bucket is tightly closed before placing in car. Cecile found out the hard way one crab night when she spotted a big blue crab perched on the back of her baby car-seat from her rear-view mirror. “It’s lucky those days that we had more crabs than cars. Imagine how I flung that car in park, grabbed the baby, jumped out and slammed back the car door so the crabs would not escape, only to have crabs running loose all over the car.”
“Crabbing is exciting, to me it’s like a Christmas event,” says Justin Uzzell, who spent his young days crabbing with his parents.
“It is a fun and exhilarating activity and a thing to do and place to go with your parents in the bushes, just like on a Hardy Boys’ adventured. It was not so much about eating crabs but catching them at night using a torch and putting them in a sack that was the thrill. As boys it felt like we were getting to stay up all night breaking the rules, which fired up the adrenaline for me and my brother,” he said. “When the night of crabbing was finished and my parents got down to cooking and eating the crabs, we were too tired to do anything else but go to bed.”
His dad Brian Uzzell says he was the bag man and his sons did the catching and when the cooking started, he got out of the way.
Marilyn’s best crabbing moment was when her husband Craig had one crab in each hand, one under each foot and one clinging to his elbow and her running to his rescue with the bucket, before sprawling flat in a patch of maiden plum. “We also did some foolhardy spur-of-the-moment crab catching, like the time we both jumped out of the truck, in the middle of the road, leaving both doors open – good thing it was a side road,” she said.
Today crabbing can be a very dangerous sport.
Going crabbing
Whether you are catching them for fun or putting them on a plate, here is a place to get started if you would like to take on the crabbing experience.
You don’t need a whole lot of equipment to catch crabs, just a big bucket or crab sack and a flashlight. Cut yourself a sturdy stick with a crutch; lather up with lots of mosquito repellant and have the Neosporin on hand when you return in case you catch a dose of poison ivy or maiden plum.
Some people take a machete, as you never know what you might encounter in the bushes, and off you go. Sounds worrisome, don’t fret – it’s lots of fun.
Where to go: crabs love the back lands and swampy areas of Cayman. If you have no idea of where to go, just drive along the road and into side roads with little development, or let a local point you in the right direction, that is, after hearing a story about the time they caught that big one and a stern lecture about not catching the ones that are spawning.
Sometimes you don’t have to leave the yard… just take a flashlight and search around the house. I found my biggest crab bounty around my home in Bodden Town after a good shower of rain.
The time you go crab hunting is important. Crabbing works best in early morning or later evening when the weather is cool. Ask the older folks – they will tell you crabs have two feeding times – at 8am and 10pm – but after a good shower of rain you can catch them anytime.
Cooking
Nothing beats the joy of boiling whole crabs, green bananas, breadfruit and Scotch bonnet peppers to be shelled and eaten with gusto at the table with lots of friends. The companionship of loud chatting in between mouthfuls of succulent crab meat washed down with cold beer is tops. The children would have already gone to bed… they like the hunt but rarely eat the meat.
But before you do this you need to get rid of the impurities from the crab. The older folks call this purging. Place crabs in a pen for a couple days; fatten with fruits and vegetables to give meat a nice taste and succulent aroma. Boil live in hot water for 15 minutes. If you are going to eat crabs out of the shell, cook an extra 10 minutes.
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