WASHINGTON — Throughout Maryland’s Chesapeake region, eating crabs is like a religion — an event reserved for slow summer afternoons with family and friends. And each person at every paper-covered ...

A recent Maryland trip taught me how essential blue crabs are in the Old Line State. On the chalkboard menu at Crabtowne USA, a fantastic sports bar in the Baltimore suburb of Glen Burnie, a dozen ...

All this week we’ve brought you the series “Claws and Effect,” a deep dive on the crabs of the Chesapeake Bay, taking a look at crabs and the crab industry in its present iteration and in the future.

Professional crab picker Joyce Fitchett, 76, shows how to pick crabs. She’s worked at different crab packing houses in Crisfield for more than 70 years. Crab picker Milkey Brown, 84, retired from ...