Tag Archives: Everglades City
How Stone Crabs Built and Sustain Everglades City
Everglades City’s fishing families are resilient by virtue of necessity. The stone crab industry embodies this, dating back to Chokoloskee native and commercial crabber Ernest Hamilton. Ernest was first to recognize their fragility and potential. He halved the traditional cooking time, then blanched the claws in an ice bath, yielding delicate, sweet meat. A few years later, Ernest and others discovered they only needed to harvest the claws—the body remains inedible while the pinchers regrow within a year. On a cloudless April morning, I travel to Grimm’s Stone Crab in Everglades City to meet with the seafood market’s owner, Howie Grimm, and his son, Quinton. Howie also happens to be the town’s mayor, and Quinton is Ernest Hamilton’s great-grandson on his mother’s side. >click to read< 11:10
Everglades City: A fishing community versed in struggle bands together after Hurricane Ian
On Friday, after the water had fully receded from roads but with the power still out, it was mostly friends and family helping each clean mud and haul belongings to the curb in the stifling heat. Many neighbors and family have known each other for generations. Betty Valdes, 41, who grew up in Everglades City and whose family runs a fishing boat, said at the height of the surge, people could boat down most every street in town. “It was solid water,” she said. Most of Everglades City’s crab boats survived, secured by those who depend on them for their livelihoods. 41photos, >click to read< 08:32
The Crab-Fishing Drug King of Everglades City
On a seafood pilgrimage to south Florida, Jamie Feldmar catches wind of drug-runners, false-bottom crab boats, and a tale so bizarre it could only be true. Maybe, Disclaimer: What I am about to tell you is all true…ish, though names have been changed to protect the guilty. I’ve fact-checked where possible, combing through newspaper archives to find evidence that supports the claims made within. But even now, months later, I still find myself questioning whether any of this was real, or if it was some kind of bizarro-world fever dream. So take everything in the account below with a grain of salt; treat it as my attempt to record a memory before it evaporates entirely. We’re en route to Everglades City because it is, according to the residents of Everglades City, the stone crab capital of the world. Dozens of crabbers are based there, supplying much of the country from October to May every year. read the story here 15:06
