A step further into the stone crab’s realm!
Hello, fellow crabbers! Glad to have you back in the Crab Shack. In this post, we will talk about harvesting your stone crabs and things you should keep in mind while doing so. Also, we will talk about our Stoners Life’s community towards the end of the post. So, let us explore more of the stone crab’s realm.
Catching stone crabs means you want to harvest its claws. You can harvest the claws for yourself or sell them; it all depends upon you and what you decide. First timers are often confused and reluctant about harvesting the stone crab’s claws properly and some even tend to injure the crabs while doing so. They come to know that the stone crabs can regenerate their lost appendages which lead them to believe that it doesn’t matter how the claws are harvested and they end up not caring about how they take the claws from the stone crabs. We want to make sure you don’t fall under that category of people. So you need to learn some proper techniques before trying to harvest their claws so that you don’t permanently injure the crab.
Here are the steps that you need to follow to properly harvest Stone crabs in Florida:
- The first step is always to measure the stone crab from its elbow to the tip of its lower immovable portion of the claw.
- If the claw is more than 2 3/4″ inches in length it may be removed from the crab and the crab may then be returned to the water. Be careful while removing the claws so that you don’t permanently injure the crab and also not yourself in the process. So here are the steps to properly remove them.
- You need to know how to properly hold the crab first. Make sure you grab the claws firmly.
- Take its right claw first (right claws are more dominantly used by them for attack and defense) and then swiftly twist and pull it off. You do this while holding its left claw and its body firmly by your other hand.
- It is legal to take both of its claws if they are of legal size but there are crabbers who only take one claw no matter if both are legal. They do this so that the crab can still defend and hunt. However, it is seen that when both claws are taken, they become a scavenger instead of a predator if they had claws on them.
- Next is to safely store away the claws until you get them back home or any other destination. It is recommended not to put the harvested claws in ice as the meat tends to stick to their shell. So instead you can use empty coolers or any other substitutes.
Now you know how to properly harvest a stone crab’s claws once you have caught them. Get ready to enjoy a tasty treat for yourself or at a family gathering. Enjoy!
Finally, we want to talk about our Stoners community briefly.
We aim to create a community centered towards crabbers and all those who are interested or passionate about crabbing. We want to create a community of people who share the same passion so that they can learn and grow together by sharing their knowledge and technique with each other.
You can become a part of our community and represent yourself with our wide range and selection of apparels from our Stoners Gear online store. Apart from the apparels, we have products like drink-wares, hats and other crabby stuff which you can check out for yourself on the website which is linked below. Hope to have you join us and represent yourself with our very own Stoners Life products to show us your support which we deeply appreciate.
So until next time when we look at another area of the stone crab realm, Happy Crabbing!
