Commensal Crabs

[DocSmith]

When I lived in Virginia in the Denbigh area I used to buy fresh oysters by the bushel and shuck them myself.  Very frequently, after opening up an oyster, I would find a small crab living inside, which I would promptly eat, raw.  They were called called commensal crabs since they were just living with the crab - they weren't parasites.  They were about the size of a nickel, very much alive, very plump, and their shell was so paper thin they were almost transparent.  I heard they were a real delicacy and that people saved them as they found them and fried them up whole in butter after a shucking session.  I never tried that, I would just put them on a cracker with cocktail sauce and eat them whole, with their legs waving in the air right there. Really freaked my kids out!  Has anyone heard of these crabs, also?

  Doc

[Siientx]

I never tried that, I would just put them on a cracker with cocktail sauce and eat them whole, with their legs waving in the air right there.

You ate it live? That part made me shiver!

[jack1747]

Has anyone heard of these crabs, also?

We always called them Pea Crabs.  Don't see as many now cause the oysters are so small I think.  When it was common place to get oysters as big as a mans hand ya had them all the time.  The oyster laws were written in a way that excluded the Pea Crab as a parasite "which it isnt".  They just co-exsist in the shell with the osyter.  Normally they do not last long enough to get to a cracker here.

[procrabber]

order-Decapoda:  genus-Pinnotheridae
they are ususally commensal, and do no harm to the host oyster, but some species do eat the host.  the species in the bay are harmless to the oyster

[Black Irish]

Isn't the mustard bad for you  ?

Thanks Doc, I had forgotten about them. I haven't had an oyster with one in it for about 15-20 years...

[Siientx]

Jack is correct. The official name for them is PEA CRAB.

(http://entomology.tfrec.wsu.edu/pearent/images/misc/Crustacea/peacrab.jpg)

[Black Irish]

I remember them being a little whiter and flatter than those in Casey's picture?

Pass the lemon. please.  

[jr]

Ive seen a few but years ago they are probally worth claming for though ive never ate one. Now i wish i did