Virginia's commercial crab season begins every March, but the first few weeks are usually lean because most crabs have not stirred from their winter resting spots at the floor of the Chesapeake Bay. This year is different because warm air temperatures — 3 to 7 degrees above normal since November — kept the bay and its tributaries from getting too cold.
As a result, crabs are seeking food, including bait in crab pots.
"This is unprecedented. We've never seen it this early," said Johnny Graham, president of Hampton-based Graham & Rollins Seafood, one of the state's largest crab processing plants. On Tuesday, when the state's blue crab season opened, watermen returned to bay docks with bushels full of the normally dormant crustacean.
"They've been up a long time. It's just been so warm," said Jimmy Winder, a waterman from Poquoson who arrived at Graham & Rollins with a few dozen bushels in the bed of his pickup truck.
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