SALTSPRING ISLAND, B.C. — The ad says "hands-on crab workshop." Just how hands-on isn't clear until the boat leaves the marina, and crab fisherman Gary Le Marchant steps out of the wheelhouse into the cold, pouring rain.
It's the second week of June but it still feels like winter on this B.C. Gulf Island. "Juneuary" someone calls it.
Mr. Le Marchant is on deck telling one of the participants to grab the hook. The surprised man reaches for it.
"See the float coming up?" he asks. "The one coming up right now. The white one! You hook onto the float and I'll put it around the winch."
A local hotel on Saltspring Island asked crab fisherman Gary Le Marchant to take guests out for 'catch your own crab' excursions. (Deddeda Stemler for The Globe and Mail)
Related Articles
The man dips the hook into the waves, leans out and snags it. Mr. Le Marchant steps in behind him. "Just stand there and pull the rope. Then, when we get the trap up, you get to handle the crab." He laughs.
If this were a driving course, you'd get classroom theory first, then hit the road, then try for your licence. Here, you get the licence first ($5.51 a day for two Dungeness crabs) then head out to sea and see what happens.
Mr. Le Marchant has been trapping and selling Saltspring Island's much sought-after Dungeness crab since the 1970s.
Last year, a local hotel,
Hastings House, asked him
to lead crab excursions for guests. The idea grew into a "catch your own crab" package, which includes accommodation, crab excursion, crab cooking class and gourmet crab feast.
"I like to fish these edges." Mr. Le Marchant points his finger along the misty shoreline. The boat is hovering on water about 30-feet deep.
"They're all walking around on the bottom. They're in little pockets around these islands. You never really know where they are. You think you do, but it's just a fantasy."
Earlier, onshore, five of us have been kitted out in rubber boots, rain ponchos and life preservers. We wear rubber safety gloves for pulling the crabs out of the trap.
"You wouldn't believe how they go after blood," Mr. Le Marchant warns. "It's inevitable you're going to get cut."
When crabs smell blood, "the whole cage is active. Oh, they just stand right up like you wouldn't believe."
Kay Ginsborg and her husband, Daniel, have flown in for this excursion from California. They're foodies, Ms. Ginsborg says. She read about Hastings House in a guide to the best small luxury hotels in the world. Hastings House is an 11th-century-Sussex-style manor built on 22 acres of farmland. Picture woolly sheep roaming past your bedroom window, a fruit orchard, the gardener picking quinces and pears and delivering them to the kitchen. Or better still, just think bucolic, far-from-the-madding-crowd, oceanfront Shangri-La and you'll have the idea.
When Ms. Ginsborg hauls up her trap, she finds a whack of crab, plus two surprise visitors: a warty-skinned predatory starfish and its even uglier cousin, the sunflower star.
"Don't grab 'em by the front," Mr. Le Marchant says of the crabs. "Grab 'em from behind." He laughs. "Then you measure 'em from point to point."
With a government-issue ruler, Ms. Ginsborg measures the width of the crab's back. "That's legal," Mr. Le Marchant confirms. She tosses the keeper in the bucket.
As per federal fishery guidelines, only male crabs with a back width of 16½ centimetres or greater can be taken. Females, and all undersized males, must be thrown back.
"These are all males," Mr. Le Marchant declares. He can distinguish just by looking at the top shell, he says, whereas most people flip the crab over to see whether the pattern on the undercarriage is shaped like a spear (a male) or is round like a bell jar (a female).
"We haven't seen a female yet," Mr. Le Marchant says. "They segregate themselves. Usually, when you get into the females, they'll be a whole bunch of females. You should usually move the gear. If you're into too many females, you know you're not going to get a male."
Mr. Ginsborg snaps his wife posing with the starfish before she drops it overboard.
"The bottom is totally covered in them," Mr. Le Marchant says. "They'll eat the biggest crab every time. It's unbelievable. What they do is, they get on its back and crack it."
Back at the dock, marine manager Lesley Cheeseman suggests we disembark during the crab cleaning. "Otherwise you get nice and slimed," she says.
On deck, Mr. Le Marchant crouches, takes a crab in both hands and smashes it on the bucket edge as though he's cracking open an egg.
"I think their brain is right between their eyes," says his assistant, Charlotte.
"You break them in the middle," Mr. Le Marchant instructs.
He tears away the gills, shakes out the dark pool of guts and throws the cleaned pieces into a separate bucket.
The next day, the group meets at 2 p.m. in the manor kitchen for a cooking demo. The recipe of the day is crab cakes.
"You cook the crab right away," says executive chef Marcel Kauer, who boiled our catch the previous night. "Then you peel it and you can freeze the meat. It's not going to get any better by the hour."
Moving the delicate meat from the shells is a labour-intensive drag, he says. He shows how he cracks the claw with a nutcracker and picks the meat with the crab's own claw.
"Is there an easy way to do it?" someone asks.
"Yeah, get someone else to do it," a voice wisecracks from the back. It's Mr. Kauer's
sous chef, Nick Trehearne, plating salad for the crab cakes.
"So, we moosh this up a bit," Mr. Kauer says. "We add egg white, some mustard powder. You don't need salt - it's salty enough from cooking. Some parsley, red pepper, chopped shallots.
"Some Japanese breadcrumbs. Just a bit," he cautions. "We're making crab cakes, not panko cakes."
He coats each patty in panko and parmesan, then quick-fries the batch in hot clarified butter to a light, crispy brown. The cakes are finished in
the oven at 550 F for three minutes. Moist and exquisite!
The Crab Catch package includes two nights' accommodation.
($650 per person): http://www.hastingshouse.com/.