My family hasn’t been in the restaurant business for 20 years now. But I still remember the soft-shell crab trips. My parents had a connect, if you will, who supplied our spots with soft crab. In season, we’d take a 90-minute ride from where I grew up in Farmville to somewhere around Tappahannock, Virginia (I’m gatekeeping a little) to our secret spot. 

In my memory, the shedding house was attached to a gas station, but in actuality, it was behind the station. It was mostly wet inside and smelled sweet and salty with those big, white, plastic bathtub-like containers filled with water and packed with crab huddled together. We’d watch two women “fish up,” or remove the recent shedders, box the live limp beauties, exchange some weather and family news, then we’d cruise back home to serve it up. It all felt very normal; our crabbers were our friends, Beatrice and Catherine, who had taken over the business from their father, who also loved to chat.

When I first heard this same type of drive was happening around Virginia at different restaurants, it seemed right. But over the last few years, however, there has been a shift. These friends and purveyors are getting harder to locate, often disclosed with an air of secrecy – and so are the soft crabs. So where have all the soft-shells gone?

Experts say it’s gotten tougher to find them in and outside the water, and harder to maintain them with new regulations and more difficult-to-navigate changes involving the water, the weather, and the intense amount of work involved. 

Declining crab

Mickey Healy, a fifth-generation waterman, has been catching soft-shell crabs commercially for a half-century. The crab population is dwindling and that’s part of the reason behind the dearth of crab, he says. Also the crabbing season is shorter in some areas due to changing regulations, meaning Healy could miss a lot of the crab all together.

Now in his 70s, Healy still crabs with his father, who is in his 90s. The two men used to set 25 traps, or fixed fishing devices also known as ‘pounds,’ on the Ware River, one of the five that feeds into Mobjack Bay. These days, however, they only set around a dozen traps and each must be registered with the state by location. 

According to Healy, the Ware River is one of the first areas to have a crab run. “Our earliest crab run has been March 25,” he says. “But due to the change in crabbing season [April 15 is the start on the Ware], I’m almost out of the game. In mid-April where I am, the season is 75% done.” 

Joey Williams, of Williams and Son Seafood, has been working on the water for just over three decades. Like Healy, he also learned from his dad; and now his 19-year-old son is learning the ropes from him. Williams believes it might be time to do away with the season restriction. “It might be we see less crab because of the weather,” he says. “Our weather is going to determine your crab season. You can set your pot or pounds, but if we have freezing weather, there aren’t going to be any crabs.”

Mike Hutt, the executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board, says the crab population also faces growing predators. Virginia has the largest estuary in the nation with some of the largest crab harvesting areas, and those areas are witnessing a hefty influx in the population of wild blue catfish. These catfish were introduced into the bay in the 1970s and ‘80s for recreational fishing and have flourished; their diet is fraught with blue crab and bivalves. 

As the catfish population grows, the ability to process them has declined due to stringent United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) federal inspection regulations, state gear and harvest restrictions and processing plant closures. (Note: catfish are the only wild-caught fish species required to undergo this inspection process). In February 2024, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced an initiative and funding to help curb the growing number of blue catfish.

Got a license?

In 2021, Virginia blue crabs contributed around $35.4 million dollars of the Commonwealth’s $1.1 billion dollar seafood industry. A recent Virginia Marine Resource Commission (VMRC) report states that Virginia ranks third in the nation in dock landings with over 350 million pounds of seafood coming into ports like Reedville, the nation’s fourth largest seafood port and second wealthiest. The same report recognized a marked decline in limited fishing licenses; crab licenses are limited to control overfishing, population and other factors. 

So where have all the watermen and women (and their licenses) gone?

First off, procuring a commercial fishing license, more specifically a crabbing license, can be likened to snagging a New York taxi medallion; either you are born into it, or you have to purchase a license from a current licensee. According to a report last year from the VMRC, 1,001 of the roughly 1,200 crabbing licenses were renewed. As for soft-shell shedding houses, only two-thirds of crabbers renewed their shedding licenses in 2023. As of this writing, there are around 25 commercial crab licenses for sale on the Virginia Marine Resources Commission website, with some selling for upwards of $25,000.

Healy recalls that he used to see mostly watermen who were born into the business and had the license passed down through the generations. More often today that’s not the case, he points out, as the younger generation seems less interested in occupations on the water. Joseph Grist and Jamie Green, VMRC Fisheries Management Division deputy chief and commissioner, respectively, are trying to combat this decline and assist with the high hurdles for entry into the commercial fishing business.

Last year, Green implemented an apprentice program intended to appeal to a younger generation, possibly new to the water, and entice them toward commercial fishing as a career. The program provides mentorship, training funds, and guidance on regulations. Among the questions the program aims to answer: How does Virginia recruit a younger generation? Are there licenses that are unclaimed? Is there a way into the limited industry directly? Their goal is to have 125 young watermen or women throughout Virginia’s commercial fishing industry by 2025. 

Williams’ path to a commercial fishing license was different. Due to regulations that are no longer in place, he didn’t have to purchase his license or inherit one. In 1995, when he applied for his commercial license, he was able to show that he’d been working on the water for over five years and that qualified him to apply and receive a license on his own. 

Williams’ son isn’t waiting to inherit from his dad, either. He has applied for the apprentice program.

“[There’s] a shift in the median age of who is in the industry; it’s a lot of the same people and a gap in age,” says Grist. “If we don’t backfill the industry, it will shrink even more.”

Losing our heritage

The business of soft shells is grueling. Most waterfolks begin their work before the season starts by getting their traps ready in January or February, procuring the multitude of licensing and learning and relearning new regulations.

“A lot of people have gotten out of soft-shell because it’s hard work, if you don’t babysit them,” says Hutt. “Some are third and fourth generation and have gotten out of it because they are tired.”

During the physical season, good crabbers are fishing their pots and sitting with their crabs from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, pulling out the recent shedders and checking the water. Some work without health insurance and without social security benefits because they are self-employed.

“My best guess is about 10% of people stay in it. There are so many skill sets needed. You need to be a mechanic, understand tides, bacteria and bio-filters, fiddle with sales and finance,” Healy explains. “Anyone can pull a crab pot, but everyone can’t be successful at it.” 

Williams agrees. “Definitely there are some young guys that want to get in the water. But not with the soft crabs — no one wants to do what we do. There is a big difference between hard crabs, oyster and soft crabs,” he says. “You can’t just take a vacation during the summer with shedding tanks. Every year more people leave the spot crab business then come into it.”

But without watermen like Healy and Williams, Virginia stands to lose this heritage.

Lee Gregory, co-owner of Richmond seafood-forward establishments, Alewife and Odyssey, knows a lot of chefs who used to drive to pick up their soft-shells. “We have driven to get them. We would drive to Urbanna because that was the relationship that was started [years ago] and the crab family tree was just better. Going down, talking with the farmer, made it feel special,” Gregory recalls. He adds that’s not always the case now. For one thing, their ‘guy’ is no longer around.

Same with my own parents’ connect, they’re also no longer around – both having passed away, leaving sons and nephews to carry on the business. Williams says he can barely keep the customer relationships he has in soft crab and isn’t really adding in a new ones. He considers many of his customers friends because they have been buying soft crabs from him for years. “It’s not that I don’t want to sell to new people. I just can’t slack the ones I’ve had.”

At the end of the day, Healy isn’t sure he will keep it up for another year. He thinks maybe it’s time for he and his wife to do something different, though he isn’t sure what that will be. As he says: “I know I need to keep moving, but it sure would be nice to sit and watch ‘Gunsmoke’ every now and again.”  

Williams plans to keep going for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t know how to do anything else,” he says. “And the people who do it with me is family: my wife, my mom, my dad, my son.”