For the "True Maryland Blue Crab Experience.”
Maryland's Finest Blue Crabs delivered to your door directly from Baltimore!
* Please note that Live Crabs are not always available for Next Day Shipping due to its availability. Please call us first and we can let you know when they can be shipped.
**We are not responsible for any dead loss on live crabs. If you are concerned about dead loss, we recommend ordering steamed crabs.
***Live Crabs MUST always ship with Overnight Delivery, to ensure quality. We only allow OVERNIGHT SHIPPING, so PLEASE CHOOSE OVERNIGHT SHIPPING.
Prepare yourself for a live catch!
Pulling up a healthy catch of blue crabs loads a pot with both female, known as sook, and male, termed jimmy wily crustaceans. Armed with a tough shell or carapace, this catch may show some angry crabs, pulled from their estuary sanctuary. A crabber can easily tell the difference between the sexes since the male has huge blue pincers or claws, and the female sports a reddish hue. Both wear a shell with a blue to olive green appearance and swim and walk sideways with three pairs of legs and two paddle rear legs. The joy of the catch shows all the differences between the male and female blue crab. Even the undercarriage or "abdomen" has uniqueness. The male sports a Washington Monument bottom apron, while the female shows a Capitol Dome look. Spotting these characteristics will make sorting your catch easy. Get those bushel baskets ready for the best of the bay, a LIVE Blue Crab Catch.
Crab Depot will use their thirty-plus years’ experience to bring you this bay delicacy for a nationwide delivery. Each crab exhibits uniqueness from size, fullness, and taste. So, know that Mother Nature's help along with healthy waterways makes for an impressive "oohh and aahh" moment when opening the live crab shipping cooler. Healthy waterways with plentiful nourishment like clams, oysters, mussels, smaller crustaceans and fish, and floating detritus make for a crab filled to the shells with jumbo, lump, and claw meat. Our crab crew chart currents, crab movement trends, and successful catches to predict and pot another round of impressive male and female crabs. Even the warmer waters help make for an impressive catch. From the Gulf of America, and up along the Eastern Seaboard, the temperature fluctuations affect the crabs' growth. Amazingly, a blue crab takes 12 months to reach maturity in the Gulf of America, while the Chesapeake Bay will take 18 months. The warmer the currents, the faster the blue crab grows! Sometimes the catch amazes even the crew. Miracles of the bay happen every day with catches similar to the all-time record catch of 1.1-pound crab, measuring 10.72 inches point-to-point. Keep in mind though, younger crabs travel better to your home destination.
All blue crabs arrive salty-sweet with a buttery rich flavor from the ideal water conditions in the largest estuary in the US, the Chesapeake Bay. The brackish waters contain a perfect mix of fresh water and salt water from the Atlantic, about a 50-50 mix. As the crabs grow in this environment, they boast seasoned meat that pops when steamed with crab house spices. Some crab eating pros savor the mustard or hepatopancreas that flavors the meat with sophistication. Unpacking a fresh load of live crabs from the bay delivers the home chef the freedom to cook with their own spices and flavors!
