Crabbing in Port Gardner

Editor’s Note: While this article is about winter crabbing, summer crabbing season is in full swing and ends September 2, 2019.

Puget Sound is part of why I live in this seaside community.

I like running on the Mill Town Trail while inhaling damp low tide smell. Stimulating. It’s the emerald waves lifting summer swimmers at Pigeon Creek. It’s the view of Hat and Whidbey Islands from Grand Avenue on a clear day.

For a long time I wanted to eat from the waters of Port Gardner as people have done for millennia. I love seafood.

So I messaged my friend Tyler Rourke. I knew he had a crabbing license and pots. He agreed to take me out crabbing on his powder blue Coleman canoe.

Tyler, his son Bryan, and I drove to Edgewater Beach on a dark afternoon in late December. It was 3 p.m. and the sky was already turning a bruised purple with muddy brown undertones: classic northwest winter gloom.

We parked at Edgewater Beach. Edgewater is the westernmost Port of Everett property, a stone’s throw from the Mukilteo waterfront and Japanese Gulch. It’s a relatively new park, established in 2012. And its accessible beaches are ideal for putting in a canoe.

A quick aside:

Negative stories seem to dominate the narrative around our coastal waters. During the past few years, local news syndicates have decried dead orcas and acidifying water.

One owner of a local stand up paddling company recently told me she lost business in August 2018 as wildfire smoke made water recreation all but unbearable.

To be sure, climate change is happening in Everett, Washington. But I also see harbor seals and even sea lions on the waterfront. I’ve seen osprey, bald eagles, cormorants. I know that there’s still life in and surrounding Port Gardner.

I wanted to see some nature.

And, full disclosure, I wanted to eat some nature… with butter and lemon juice.

Tyler set the canoe into the shallow water and he rowed out beside the pier. He rowed to the buoys marking the crab pots’ location. We drifted slightly with the tide, edging out to sea near the drop off. The crab pots were dropped to a depth of 150 feet.

When we reached the buoys Tyler hauled in the dripping line, gripping the rope with rubber-palmed gloves and hoisting the pots into the canoe. The shelled creatures clawed at the air, pinching and trying to free themselves from the wire trap.

Tyler had a laminated badge around his neck and inside was his crabbing license. He used a printed ruler on the license to measure each catch, carefully discarding undersized crabs back into the waves.

“Classic mistake,” He muttered. “…forgot the calipers.”

He also discarded less-desirable red rock crabs and any Dungeness that were insufficiently meaty.

Only one crab was salvageable from among the ranks of the captured crustaceans. Tyler placed it in a five-gallon white plastic bucket. He paddled to the second buoy.

“The whole experience felt for a moment like I was living in a tourism website. Does this actually happen Here?”

The whole experience felt for a moment like I was living in a tourism website. Does this actually happen here? Can you go crabbing with seals next to the place where commercial airplanes were perfected?

The answer is yes.

We caught 16 crabs and kept three of them. Tyler beached the boat and we got into the van to drink homemade hot chocolate.

It was a great day.

I will get a boat this year, somehow. I will get some crab pots, too. I’m going out again when crabbing season returns in July.

I want to live in close relationship with the sea. I want to eat delicious crabs from it and let it wash my digitally-crammed mind clean with the white noise of water on sand. I want to look at the waves and be renewed.

There’s a motif in American conservation: outdoor enthusiasts vouchsafe nature for the next generation. That’s because they’re the ones in the forests, on canoes, walking the beaches—keeping an eye on Mother Nature.

It’s only human to protect what you love.

RECIPE FOR CRAB DIP

(Courtesy of Brittney Rourke)

Layered Crab Dip

12 oz. crab meat
2-3 green onions, chopped
1/2 C. diced cucumber
1/2 C. purple onion
1 medium tomato, diced
1/4 C. fresh lime juice
1/4 C. fresh lemon juice
1/4 C. orange juice

2 TBS. fresh parsley, minced
salt and pepper to taste

16 oz. cream cheese
1/4 C. mayo
2 avocados, diced
Sturdy chips or crackers to serve.

In a medium bowl combine crab meat, green onions, cucumber, purple onion and tomato. Pour combine citrus juices over mixture. Stir well. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next day drain crab mixture. Season with salt, pepper and fresh parsley. Taste. Does it need more salt? Pepper? Parsley? You want the flavors to sing. Adjust until you're satisfied.

Blend cream cheese and mayo with hand mixer or paddle attachment in Kitchen Aid mixing bowl. Spread in serving platter (a pie plate works well) and top with diced avocado. Add drained crab mixture and serve with chips or crackers. Enjoy your catch.