CAMBRIDGE, M.D. — Jack Brooks watches as 60 of his employees use short, quick strokes to pick meat from piles of freshly steamed blue crabs. As they place the meat into plastic containers, men steer in wheelbarrows to shovel more crabs onto the long metal tables.
"We try to get everything out of the crab we can," says Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a 120-year-old seafood distribution company founded by his great-grandfather.
Just outside this room, in the waters of the Chesapeake, blue crabs appear to be making a comeback, raising hopes that after years of decline, the industry that harvests them may rebound, too. Annual counts show the bay's crab population has jumped sharply in the two years since Maryland and Virginia imposed major restrictions on catching females.
But watermen remain unhappy about the restrictions, and their full effect remains to be seen.
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