If any food nourishes Maryland's heart and soul, it is the meat of the Atlantic blue crab.
For generations, Marylanders have formed it into crab cakes and used it in soup. They have stuffed it in rockfish and served it in crab salad. It is so much a part of Maryland's identity that Callinectes sapidus, the "beautiful swimmer" of Chesapeake Bay fame, has been designated the official state crustacean.
But before you order a crab cake at a local restaurant, you might want to know there's an excellent chance the meat is not from American waters and is not Atlantic blue crab.
The menu might say "blue crab," but for all you know, the meat was picked in Sumatra.
Over the past five years, the seafood industry has witnessed a quiet revolution in the market for crab meat. Importers -- led by the Baltimore-based company that owns the Phillips seafood restaurants -- have clawed their way to an estimated two-thirds share of the U.S. market.
Owners of Maryland crab picking houses say imports are the most serious threat the industry has ever seen -- even more dangerous than the declining catch in the Chesapeake Bay. They say that if their business continues to erode, it could have devastating consequences for bay watermen and the communities that depend on their income.
Crab-loving consumers have largely been left in the dark as these changes have occurred. Look beneath the shell of today's crab meat industry and you're going to find some surprises:
Phillips Foods Inc., which built its reputation and fortune on its association with Maryland and Chesapeake Bay crabs, has created an Asian crab meat empire with 10,000 workers and eight seafood processing plants in three countries.
Those Phillips "Maryland-style" crab cakes in the grocery's frozen food section -- one of the seafood industry's hottest products -- are made in Baltimore, but the crab meat mostly comes from Indonesia, Thailand or the Philippines.
These Asian plants process crab meat from the species Portunus pelagicus and supply it to thousands of restaurants around the country, including Phillips' own seafood houses in Ocean City and Baltimore. The meat is generally regarded as more bland than Atlantic blue crab, but seafood buyers say it's virtually shell-free and makes a fine crab cake.
While none of the Asian crab meat comes from the Atlantic blue crab, its marketers often label it "blue crab." The practice is legal.
