HOOPERS ISLAND - Just a few months ago, Harry Phillips wouldn't have bet a nickel that his crab processing plant would still be in business - much less humming along, turning out mounds of creamy steamed crabmeat.
In March, Maryland's Eastern Shore seafood packers were waiting anxiously to see whether Congress would approve a bill allowing hundreds of guest workers from Mexico to get temporary visas to return to this country for the crab season.
"It looked real bad there for a while," Phillips said. "Without these workers, we just couldn't operate. We were ready to give up, but of course, you can't give up."
Now, with their labor woes fixed by legislation for at least two years, Phillips and other processors are busy with the early crab harvest - and preparing for what they anticipate will be a booming business in a month or so as Chesapeake Bay watermen reap an abundant crop of baby crabs that will grow to legal size by next month and October.
Phillips has a dozen crab pickers working at Russell Hall Seafood. But he has applied for 40 more temporary workers to get through the anticipated rush in the fall, traditionally the busiest time of year for about 25 picking operations in Maryland.
Jack Brooks, whose family owns J.M. Clayton in Cambridge, says there's cause for optimism, even though demand for bay crabs is lagging right now.
"Demand is off, but it's not a resource issue - the crabs are definitely here, our supply is good," Brooks said. "We have crabs to pick, crabmeat to sell. We're in pretty good shape."
So far, the state's crab harvest for April and May is down from the same months in the past two years. But Lynn Fegley, who heads the state Department of Natural Resources' blue crab program, says winter dredge samples in the bay suggest there will be an increase in the overall harvest by the end of the season. Last year, the catch totaled 30 million pounds.
Many among this year's bumper crop of young crabs should reach market size in time for Labor Day, Fegley said.
Watermen such as Tony Haden, who works trot lines in the Honga River offshore from Hoopers Island and supplies crabs to Phillips' picking house, goes further, predicting a big harvest next year, too.
"Lately, I could catch 40 or 50 bushels a day, but I've been throwing most of them back because they're too small," Haden said. "But this is the most little crabs I've seen in 25 years. We're playing catch up now from a cool spring, but there are going to be some big crabs out there for the next couple years at least."
