ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Stone crab season is upon us, and the waters off Tampa Bay are teeming with life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And if stone crab season is open \u2014 then look for Matt Nuemann on the water \u2014 his workspace for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s checking his stone crab traps one buoy at a time a few miles off Clearwater Beach, looking for claws.<\/p>\n
There are keeper claws and throwback claws.<\/p>\n
Some crabs are too light because they are molting.<\/p>\n
Some crabs are pregnant.<\/p>\n
And some crabs\u2019 claws are too little, measuring under 2 7\/8 inches.<\/p>\n
Under or over, they all live and the claws regenerate.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is the only sustainable industry out here, and it\u2019s a pretty cool thing to be a part of,\u201d said Nuemann.<\/p>\n
Nuemann also discards by-catch like puffer fish, and mother-in-law fish.<\/p>\n
Finally, he reloads bait, replaces the trap and heads in to Hookin\u2019 Ain\u2019t Easy for the boil.<\/p>\n
Nuemann adds gulf water for seasoning and adds the claws when the water boils.<\/p>\n
He brings it back to a boil for eight minutes.<\/p>\n
Then he puts them in an ice bath for thirty minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason I put them in the ice bath is so they release from the shell,\u201d said Nuemann.<\/p>\n
And then the claws are ready to enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Stone crab season is upon us, and the waters off Tampa Bay are teeming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[7147,7152,28,115,139,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,7148,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-34359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-chefs-kitchen","9":"tag-chefs-kitchen","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-pinellas-county","14":"tag-st-pete","15":"tag-st-pete-headlines","16":"tag-st-pete-news","17":"tag-st-petersburg","18":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","19":"tag-st-petersburg-news","20":"tag-tampa","21":"tag-virginia-johnson","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}