CRAB SEASON IN Maryland is supposed to officially open on April 1. But in 2022, cold waters kept the crabs dormant and delayed the harvest by a few weeks. Travis Todd, owner of Ocean Odyssey Restaurant in Cambridge, Maryland, says, “For the first time in history, we didn’t even have crab cakes on the menu because we didn’t think we could get the meat because the crabs weren’t here yet.”
Apart from those challenges, he adds that a shortage of seasonal workers hired to pick crabmeat through a limited number of H-2B visas also threatened production in many of the local packing houses. Add to that the rising cost of diesel fuel, which powers most crab boats and transport trucks, plus the increased price of wood
