Frying up soft-shell crabs to make poboys! Thanks to Mr. Daniel Edgar at St. Mary Seafood and Marina for these beauties! To grow larger, crabs must molt or shed their old shells. At shedding facilities, peelers are held in tanks until they molt. To shed the old shell, a crab swells with water and busts the old shell along the back edge of the shell. The crab then wiggles out through the back. The new shell has already formed and is about a third larger, but it is still soft. The crab will remain truly soft for a couple of hours in the water. If removed, the hardening stops. Shedders must remove soft-shell crabs quickly — at all hours of the day — to prevent shell hardening. This is one of the reasons why soft-shell crab is six to seven times higher in price over hard-shell crab. Shedding crabs in Louisiana dates back to the late 1800s. #softshellcrab #crab #louisiana #bluecrab #swamppeople