Watermen are considered essential workers in Maryland, exempt from limitations imposed by Gov. Larry Hogan to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
But Jason Ruth of the Harris Seafood Company doesn’t have anyone scheduled to start working his company’s oyster aquaculture lease on Wednesday. The weather is fair this spring, but as celebrations are canceled and restaurants are closed to the public to heed social distancing orders and stem the spread of coronavirus, the market for oysters and crabs has dried up. They’ll start collecting oysters from the bar when sales are made, Ruth said, but the outlook for the summer is murky.
“If there was a hurricane today, I could tell you (what would happen),” he said. “If it was an oil spill I could tell you that. We’ve been through an oil spill. Nobody has ever seen this.”
Most summers they have 10 to 15 boats on the water working, dragging oysters from the bottom for wholesale every day of the week through September. They’ll still be planting oysters in aquaculture bars, but they don’t have the sales to justify harvest because of coronavirus.
Harris Seafood Company shucks and packs both wild caught and aquaculture oysters and ships them around the country. The crisis struck at the end of the wild harvest season in Maryland, which ran through Tuesday. Ruth said he had to layoff watermen for the last two weeks of the season because of a decline in demand.
“It pretty much stopped the market,” Ruth said.
Crabbing season begins April 1, but the bulk of their steamed and picked crabs are sold to restaurants.
Graduation parties, spring fundraisers, picnics, and birthdays — crabs and oysters are something Marylanders eat to celebrate. But such gatherings are illegal due to coronavirus.
Until restaurants are open normally again — which at a crab house means paper on the tables and a big pile of crabs everyone grabs from — the crab industry will be in dire straits, Ruth said.
“The best thing the public can do right now is support their local restaurants,” Ruth said. “So when and if this problem turns around we can get right back to where we were.”
And if demand were to rise, Ruth said picking houses, which rely on workers traveling from other countries using H2B visas, have been affected by travel restrictions. That sector was already under pressure because of a cap on the number of H2B visas distributed.
President of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association Jack Brooks said only a third of the region’s primary crab processors got such visas this year, and the virus throws more doubt onto the availability of workers needed to separate meat from shell.
Brooks, who also owns J.M. Clayton and Company in Cambridge, said they will not be fully staffed, to ensure workers can remain appropriate social distance from one another. The company picks and packs crab meat, and has been in business since 1890.
“We will respond to challenges that arise,” he said. “We have been around for quite a while.”
General Manager Bruce Whalen of Cantler’s Riverside Inn in Annapolis said the coronavirus situation is like a tunnel that they can’t see the light at the end of.
In addition to restrictions on social gatherings affecting the sale of their steamed crabs, Whalen said the price of crabs and oysters also lowers demand. The pandemic is causing financial stress, and a burger or chicken is more affordable than crabs for dinner.
“Crabs are more of a luxury,” he said.
Customers bring out-of-town guests to get crabs. So much of the business centers around gatherings, Whalen said. Cantler’s is still offering carryout, as are other restaurants in the region, but Whalen said they are starting to reduce inventory.
“It has a shelf life of days, not weeks,” he said.
