Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden: A Memoir

Crab Pots and Poachers

Crab Pots and Poachers hen I first started patrolling the rivers around Charleston, there was a large concentration of crabbers in the Wando River. I remember local names such as Manigault, Coakley, Gaskins, Aytes, White, Crane, and Smith as well as a good number of Hispanic and Asian names over the years. Most of the crabbers worked their pots from small boats. Each one typically maintained forty or fifty pots, which were pulled in by hand. Many carried an assistant, called a “striker,” who graded the crabs after they were emptied out of the crab pot into the grading box. The crabs smaller than five inches were tossed back, and the remainder were sorted into baskets of “number ones” or “twos and threes.” Number ones were the larger blue-clawed males, or “jimmy crabs.” The twos and threes basket held a mixture of the smaller “jimmies” and the red-clawed females, or “sooks.” The number ones brought the highest price. When I was grading crabs, I went first for the baskets of twos and threes. Some crabbers were known to put undersize crabs that were illegal to sell in the bottom part of the basket and cover them with legal crabs. Occasionally they would even slip a few sooks in the bottom of a basket of number ones. If you looked closely through the cracks around the bottom of the basket, you could spot the red-clawed females without having to empty it. Occasionally I found baskets where—buried beneath a deep layer of legal “twos and threes”—were concealed egg-bearing “sponge” crabs with their spongebearing aprons torn off. It was illegal to sell crabs with their aprons removed or to possess sponge-bearing crabs. W 90 Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden Some crabbers were extremely territorial and claimed whole creeks and stretches of the river for themselves. Often they became aggressive when another crabber encroached on what they fancied as their territory. Turf battles were one of the chief law-enforcement problems in the regulation of that business and required a large number of officer man-hours to investigate and resolve. The crabbers’ main means of retaliation against perceived interlopers was cutting off their pot floats. This act of vandalism not only deprives the owner of the use of his pots but also wastes the resource; the lost pots continue to attract crabs, which die and in turn attract other crabs until the pot becomes overgrown with seaweed or deteriorates. During my early years in the river, there was at least one broad-daylight killing resulting from one crabber stealing another’s crabs. Several other crabbers drowned under mysterious circumstances while out working their pot lines. I will never forget the pitiful gatherings at Remleys Point Landing on the Wando River, where friends and relatives of a missing crabber maintained vigils for days as searches were conducted, and the awful commotion that ensued when the body was at last recovered and brought back to the landing. In a fifteen-foot Boston Whaler rigged out for an extended patrol. In addition to the twenty-gallon tank forward, there were two six-gallon tanks aft. Crab Pots and Poachers 91 There were frequent clashes that involved fisticuffs and ramming boats. At one time there was a full-fledged crab war among crabbers in the Charleston and Mount Pleasant area, where pots were cut and weapons brandished. The war started from differences between local crabbers and several Virginian crabbers who had moved into the area. The Virginians fished a lot more pots and spent more time on the water. Some of the locals regarded them as “foreigners” invading “their” territory and catching all of “their” crabs. It turned into a volatile situation, and several of the meetings held in an attempt to moderate some of the issues and misperceptions turned into ugly shouting matches. The meetings grew so rancorous that game wardens were assigned to be present to prevent violence. My personal contribution toward ending the war was to step up my crab grading. Ordinarily I randomly selected a basket of crabs and graded all the crabs in that basket. On a good day most crabbers will have anywhere from ten to twenty baskets of crabs on board. To facilitate the grading process, I designed and had made a special stainless-steel crab grader. It had a long bar to use as the handle and two circles...