SWAN QUARTER, N.C., — July 29, 2013 — In the mid-1990s, Mattamuskeet was one of about 45 crab processors in the state. Now there are 10.
Why? Imported crabmeat. Ninety-one percent of all the seafood Americans consume comes from overseas, according to the federal government. Crab is no different. While statistics aren’t easily available for the handpicked fresh crabmeat that Mattamuskeet produces, 99 percent of the 66 million pounds of canned crabmeat sold in the United States in 2011 was imported, according to numbers shared by the National Fisheries Institute, a trade association based in Virginia. It is imported from countries such as China, Indonesia, Venezuela and Mexico.
There was a steady pulse on the crab picking floor at Mattamuskeet Seafood in Swan Quarter last Tuesday morning. Cumbia music thumped on a radio. Knives clacked against the table. Forty-four gallon trash cans whirred across the floor, ferrying steamed blue crabs to each picking station and taking shells away.
There are two styles of crab picking among the 25 or so workers, depending upon which part of Mexico they call home. Those from the state of Tabasco on Mexico’s east coast line the crab up on the edge of the table to cut off its legs. Others, such as Dalia Salazar from the state of Sinaloa on Mexico’s west coast, do all the work while holding the crab in the palms of their hands.
Salazar, 38, can pick a crab in 15 seconds. First, she removes the bright red shell, then the legs, then the gills. Then she plucks out the prized chunks of jumbo lump meat, then the backfin meat and finally any extraneous meat from what she calls the “top.” Salazar has worked at Mattamuskeet for six years. She travels from Mexico each summer on a guest worker visa, arranged by her boss, Sherrie Carawan, who owns the company with her husband, Charles, and 35-year-old son Cory.
The Carawan family, who live in this town of 324 better known for its ferry stop on the way to Ocracoke, have been in the crab business since the 1980s and have so far survived the industry’s ups and downs. The only sure thing about their future is more ups and downs.
Crabs from the sounds and intracoastal waterway are North Carolina’s largest seafood industry with an overall value last year of $22.8 million. That’s a third of the state’s entire commercial seafood catch of $73 million of fish and shellfish in 2012.
Read the full story at the Charlotte Observer