OT - Crabs lived in water, Died in my cooler?

This has been bothering me for a few weeks.

We went to Ocean City, MD last month and spent a day crabbing with chicken legs and string. We caught enough crabs in a few hours to feed the 6 of us.

I mistakenly assumed that since the crabs live in the water I should transport them back to our condo in water, so I put enough water in the cooler to cover them. They were all pretty feisty during the few hours we were catching them and tossing them in the cooler.

However, a couple of hours later when we got back to the condo, 90% of them were dead.

I later learned that they should be transported on ice with a roughly

50 degree temp being the best.

The thing I don't get is why did they die in the cooler in just a couple of hours? In all the time we were crabbing I never saw one crab "come up for air" so I assume that they can breath in water.

Did they simply use up all of the oxygen in the cooler water and basically drown?

Reply to
DerbyDad03
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Probably got too hot.

Reply to
tmclone

Your last question: Yes. They need moving, fresh water, which is why live wells on boats have pumps & aerators. I used to go crabbing with my grandfather, and if we didn't have ice handy, he'd put the crabs in the cooler between layers of wet towels, or even newspaper, which he always seemed to have on his boat.

Your nose is the best judge of whether conditions in the cooler are still healthy. It doesn't take long for unhealthy seafood to smell "off".

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

quoted text -

Thanks.

re: "Your nose is the best judge of whether conditions in the cooler are still healthy."

When we got back to the condo I was concerned about eating the dead crabs. I had heard that you should never eat dead crabs because the bacteria begin to grow very soon after they die. I was almost resigned to telling the family that we weren't having crab for dinner when I came across a website from the University of Texas that basically said that if you *know* when they died and if it's only been a couple of hours, then you're safe.

Apparently all the other info was related to *buying* dead crab, like off a truck or something, where you don't know when they died.

We ate our fill and no one got sick.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Thanks.

re: "Your nose is the best judge of whether conditions in the cooler are still healthy."

When we got back to the condo I was concerned about eating the dead crabs. I had heard that you should never eat dead crabs because the bacteria begin to grow very soon after they die. I was almost resigned to telling the family that we weren't having crab for dinner when I came across a website from the University of Texas that basically said that if you *know* when they died and if it's only been a couple of hours, then you're safe.

Apparently all the other info was related to *buying* dead crab, like off a truck or something, where you don't know when they died.

We ate our fill and no one got sick.

============

"knowing when" - that's a good point.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

If you really want to get nutty about this (and you should, if your kids are smart enough to love seafood), here's an idea:

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A google search for "portable fish live well" comes up with similar plans.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

I listened NPR cooking episode last month about a guy who shipped eels across the country. His eels got lost and arrived a week late, spoiled. Since he paid so much for them, he cooked them for hours and ate them anyway, and lived to report it.

Reply to
Deodiaus

You could have added a a couple of drops of Hydrogen Peroxide / gal water /hr. It gives off 02. We did this in science lab in 7th grade.

Reply to
Deodiaus

With eels, it's the industrial toxins in their flesh which keep some of the bacteria at bay. :-)

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

There are certain toxins that bacteria produce in dying/dead seafood that no amount of cooking will get rid of.

Reply to
A. Baum

Yep, there I was, standing at the end of 3 mile dirt road, in the middle of a nature preserve, saying "Honey, did you bring any Hydrogen Peroxide on our crabbing trip?"

I'll keep in mind for next year. ;-)

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Yep, there I was, standing at the end of 3 mile dirt road, in the middle of a nature preserve, saying "Honey, did you bring any Hydrogen Peroxide on our crabbing trip?"

I'll keep in mind for next year. ;-)

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Don't bother. If it was such a hot idea, I'm sure I would've heard of it before, after reading fishing books & magazines for 35+ years.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

re: "Don't bother."

pssst...don't tell Deodiaus, but I wasn't really planning on doing it.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

re: "Don't bother."

pssst...don't tell Deodiaus, but I wasn't really planning on doing it.

==============

So much for concentrating on work.

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Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

I eat overdue pickles but protein is a tough call. Never had this stuff but a friend said it was OK .

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Bill

Reply to
Bill who putters

Boy, that sounds familiar. Same thing happened to me when we visited my aunt who lived on the Jersey shore. Crabbed all day for a huge crab boil the next afternoon. My aunt specifically warned not to cover the crabs in water, but allow them to sit in a large empty tub, overnight. Me, being a young stupid teen who knew better than my elders (is there any other kind!?), immediately disregarded the warning and covered them in fresh water, my younger brother threatening, "I'm gonna tell". I wish he had. Next morning, all dead and my aunt at mach 3 ballistic.

Bingo!

nb

Reply to
notbob

I'd try it just because two airlines banned it. :-)

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

Yes: 20-somethings who forgot to grow up. At a BBQ three weeks ago, the host's son-in-law (29 yrs old) watched as an elder made the usual pyramid with charcoal briquettes (no chimney started available), and said "I heard somewhere that's it's better to start them in one layer". This child had been doing a "yeah, but" routine all afternoon, so the elder said "Fine. You do it." 45 minutes later, no fire. By this point, all elders including an 85 year old grandMOTHER were responding to his complaints with "Read the friggin' instructions." An elder finally took over after the child went to the computer to research the problem online. Hey - why read the back of the friggin' charcoal bag, right? Does it make sense that the manufacturer wants customers to be successful so they'll buy more charcoal?

The child meandered out of the house later and said he'd found an online source which confirmed the pyramid idea. His wife was pretending she'd never met him. I suspect their ride home was an icy one.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

If it had been "Next day" I wouldn't have eaten them either! It was no more than a couple of hours since they were loaded - alive - into the van before I opened the cooler back at the condo, so I wasn't too worried.

The other thing that happened that night was that I grabbed all the pots I could find in the rented condo, ending up with 4 pots (one for each burner).

One pot held 3 crabs, 1 held 2, the other 2 held 1 each. As you can imagine, we were eating pretty slowly since I could only cook them in batches of 7 or so. It's a good thing it takes time to crack them open and eat!

Wouldn't you know it - the next day I found a huge crab steaming pot still in it's box, inside a bag, in the corner of the pantry.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Yes, basically. They need oxygen. Stagnant, non-aerated water will kill the crabs. If you want fresh crabs as a bait keep them in a live well.

Growing up on the Gulf coast of Florida, I've never seen crabs transported in water. "Crabbers" checked their crab pots early in the morning, and threw the catch in a "crab box" (a slatted box). They would make the run to the fish house where the crabs were iced down or placed in a display case. Just for shade one might put wet burlap over the box...not always though.

Reply to
Oren

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