How much meat can you expect

from a large sized {6”-6.5”} blue crab?

Blue crabs scurry through estuaries, lagoons, and rivers all along the U.S.’s eastern seaboard. What causes them to ‘scurry’? Through their entire life, they’re on a quest for nourishment. All sizes of clams, oysters, mussels, worms, fish, and even insects motivate their appetites. The more they eat, along with perfect amounts of salinity, around 25% and a temperature around 75 ℉ is ideal for a crab filled with delicious meat. Interestingly, females prefer higher salt contents in the deep bay waters, while males paddle up the rivers and tributaries. Just like adding salt to meat for flavor, some explain female sook’s sweetness from this good dousing of saltier water. The crab’s movement, especially with the back-swimming legs develops high-protein, plump meat. This benefit increases as the crab grows into a ripe age of about 4 years. The rewards are immense with oceanic sweet buttery meat savored for crab feasts, crab cakes, and all sorts of culinary delicacies.

Some crabs get quite aggressive as they feast. In fact, they take their strong pincers and pry open tight clam, oyster, and mussel shells to dig out the protein-rich muscles. This diet adds to the crab’s nutritious value since these mollusks filter feed on plankton, floating organic matter and plant particles. With the perfect play of all these variables, from environment to sustenance, an average adult crab, around 6 inches will weigh about 1/3 of a pound. Take about 3 crabs and a skilled picker will extract a yield of about 14% or 2 ¼ ounces of meat, according to crab eating experts. Most dishes call for a serving size of 3 ounces. Do you normally prefer a bit more than the nutrition label?  Most crab enthusiasts answer, “Sure do!” So, we recommend about 6 large crabs per diner with about ¼ pound of meat. Just make sure you catch “fat crabs” from watermen who take pride in delivering meat filled “rusty belly” crabs. These crabs spend months in their present shell, guaranteed to have robust meat!