This time, he lets me try one. He drives the boat, as I stand with the gaff. We approach the buoy. I slide the wooden pole into the water to hook the line. The boat glides by. I miss the rope by a foot.
He circles back around and we try again. Triumphant, I hook the line. That was the easy part.
He helps me pull the trap aboard and now I am face to face with what seems like hundreds of menacing crabs. (It was more like 10.) They snap their claws and glare at me with beady eyes.
I turn the trap on its side and rap it against the side of the boat to dump out the raw bait.
I’m scared.
I’m a guest on Mike O’Leary’s boat. O’Leary, 50, has been crabbing for 30 years. Each morning he sets out just after daybreak to collect the crabs that were lured into his traps the day before. By midafternoon, he delivers his crabs to the Crab Market on 49th Street South in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla.
O’Leary doesn’t catch crabs. He hunts them.
“Like the old saying goes,” he says, “if they called it catching, everyone would be doing it.”
O’Leary strategically places his traps along the shores of south Tampa Bay. Buoys mark their locations.
To understand crabbing you must know about crab traps.
Each trap, also known as a pot or cage, has four holes for the crabs to get in. These entryways are called funnels. The crabs are lured in by bait — red herring and raw chicken — which is stored in a protective wire casing known as the bait holder.
Inside the trap, the crabs pass through the baffle, a layer of metal wiring that divides the trap in two parts. The baffle gets its name from its function — “baffling” the crabs from escaping.
O’Leary dispenses fisherman’s wisdom throughout the journey. You can tell the female blue crabs from the male blue crabs by the red on the tips of their claws. Nail polish, he calls it.
He pulls another crab from the trap.
” ‘V’ for virgin crab,” he says, pointing to the v-shaped abdomen on its white belly. “Put it in a trap and it will attract the males.”
He splits open a blue crab for an anatomy lesson. “Devil’s lungs,” he says, pointing to what look like a pair of soft white pouches.
Why are they called devil’s lungs?
“You’re a girl from Maryland and you’re asking me that,” he says with a grin. “You ought to be ashamed, coming from a big crab-eatin’ country.”
I am ashamed. It’s no excuse that Bethesda is a suburb miles from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. I studied crabs in third grade. The blue crab is Maryland’s state crustacean. I should know these things. But devil’s lungs?
“If you eat them you get sick,” he tells me.
I want to ask O’Leary if I can wear his bright red gloves. Maybe the bite will hurt less if I’m wearing those.
I’m still scared of getting pinched.
Finally, I raise the trap over the wooden box and start to shake it. Nothing happens.
“Shake it some more, girl. Shake it like you’re dancing.”
I muster all the strength I can and shake the trap harder this time. A few crabs drop into the crate, but some big ones with beady eyes linger at the top, unwilling to let go. I give up.
O’Leary takes over the trap and with a single jerk of his arms the rest of the crabs fall neatly into the box.
He makes it look so easy.
