Brown Trout and Blue Mussels: Pilgrim on the Crustacean Path

When I was an undergrad, I was an idiot. And those of you scratching your puzzled brow and thinking “so what’s new” have no idea. Compared to the idiot I am now, I was a far more seriously, intensely, dangerously self-destructive idiot.

And, as much as I’d like to claim credit for the transition from “seriously, intensely, etc.” idiocy to my present state of dysfunctional semi-idiocy, I’m afraid I can’t. In fact, in my case, college did the job it was designed to do. It helped me grow up.

Among the things that saved me from my post-adolescent self in the dim depths of the 1970s was Bob Loveland’s course in Marine Biology. Loveland was a very, very good teacher. Loved his subject, knew a lot about it, conveyed his excitement for the rigorous details as keys to the Big Concepts.

Marine Bio was a Big Course. 5 credits, 3 for lecture, 2 for lab, 2 long lab periods every week along with 3 lectures. Our first collecting trip was a most-of-a-day bus ride to the jetty along the Shark River inlet at Belmar and Avon.

It was a chilly October afternoon. We were a dozen or so undergrads and a couple of grad students. The task was to collect sufficient interesting invertebrates to let us work through identification keys and gain some understanding of evolutionary biodiversity in the Atlantic nearshore.

Tide was high, and, as I say, the wind was cold. For a couple hours we dipped nets and leaned down into the rocks to retrieve what mollusks and crustaceans we could. Pretty meager pickings. Presently I started retrieving specimens those with more sense pointed out from the relatively dry top of the jetty. Pretty soon I was full in the water, swimming around the submerged boulders and handing up buckets and nets full of urchins, sea squirts, mussels, and periwinkles. Near dark, I spotted a spider crab the size of my hand parked in a crevice. I asked the nearest grad student if spider crabs had any weaponry worth worrying about. He said “There’s only one way to find out”. So I reached in and grabbed it. Of course, its soft cuticle and sluggish demeanor rendered it harmless. I snagged a couple others before having to pile onto the bus in cold, soaked clothing.

I asked the grad students if spider crabs were edible. They opined that it was likely, but they never heard of anyone eating them, and that there was “only one way to find out.”

Since then, I’ve seen spider crab looking things in Italian cookbooks, with notes indicating that they are delicious and need only a squirt of lemon to make a first-class meal. Never had the opportunity to test that theory.

Until Spain. I got separated from our small group hiking through the medieval alleys of Old City Seville, and Cathy finally hunted me down. At that point we had no clue where Brian and Tim might be. So we found an outdoor table at a place serving cold beer, and ordered gazpacho, Serrano ham, and aged Manchego cheese. I spotted 2 big spider crabs on ice under the counter, and established that they were priced by weight. I ordered one, a honkin’ 600 grams, or 18 Euros worth.

It took a while to prepare. Meantime, the waitress brought what looked like 19th century surgical tools and left them on the table in preparation.

Stainless steel surgical tools for

dealing with a massive spider

crab appetizer.

Eventually the beautifully cooked and cooled crab arrived, and I got to work with the surgical tools.

Spider crab ready to eat.

Turns out, spider crabs are in fact “edible”. However, they have very little muscle crammed into that carapace. After an hour or so, I had extracted what little meat I could from the carcass and we headed off to the hotel.