April 17, 2020 — Brian Hoffecker almost didn’t make it through the first year he ventured off on his own as a commercial fisherman.
It was the mid-1990s and he owed a lot of money on the boat he had just bought when a historic winter storm hit his prey – Delmarva’s iconic blue crabs – hard.
“When it was time to go crabbing, I was broke,” he said. “It was brutally cold and it killed most of the crabs. There weren’t any crabs to catch.”
After more than two decades making a living on the water, the impacts of the coronavirus, Hoffecker’s livelihood is threatened once again.