Robbo Howes of SoCo Seafood

In this episode of Voices of Annapolis, we sit down with Robbo Howes of SoCo Seafood to talk all things seafood, sustainability, and building a business rooted in community.

From sourcing the freshest catch to navigating the local food scene, Robbo shares the story behind SoCo and what it takes to bring quality seafood to the table in our area. 

Tune in for a conversation that’s equal parts passion, grit, and local flavor.

https://www.facebook.com/p/SoCo-Seafood-5624-Shady-Side-Rd-100063703442572/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Harbor Light at the Main Street night for the Bay Run F and the City Shines right. These are the voices, these are their stories. The Voices of Annapolis have to dive in. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for tuning in to The Voices of Annapolis. This is Kelly Bell from the Bellhouse Catering and Gretchen Moran from the Culinary Square. Gretchen, how have you been? I've been good. Yeah? Yeah. What are you drinking, Cal? Um, this is a green tea that Beth bought me. Her husband gets fancy tea. Oh she she's very good to you. She's very nice.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

You have to be are you as good to her as she is to you? I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

She thinks so.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Well, you know, it's a fancy tea. It looked very pretty in the little bag, and it was a freebie, you know, like when spice companies also have a little freebie. Well, I got a green tea freebie, and she's like, You're the only person that drinks green tea. That's a new thing for me. Um, it tastes like uh rice puffs, like sugar smacks. Sugar smacks. Not like green tea at all.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

I wonder how many of our listeners remember sugar smacks. Are they still on the shelf, do you think? The sugar smacks? Yeah, they're the puffed, the puffed rice butter like caramel flavor.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I I don't think we were allowed to have sugar smacks. I think we I think I only was able to have the puffed rice, and that was like we're not having that. But it even looks like there's puffed rice in the bag.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, that's that's a scary-looking teabag, honestly. I know they think it's fancy. I don't know why you're still drinking it because I need some caffeine. I'm assent. All right. Well, we have a really wonderful guest that's gonna perk you up. Hopefully, because get me in the get me in the mood for some crabs, bibit. That's right. We've got Robbo House with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah. Rabbo.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Bravo.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

And is it short for Robert?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

I have no idea. I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Oh, so this is what you did on your birth certificate name.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

No, no, no, no. It's my birth certificate name is Robert, but Rabbo's been with me for a long time. So I don't know why it originated really.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yeah. And Rabbo is a tried and true, dyed-in-the-wool, real-life Maryland waterman. I know. Which do you know? Before I got involved in the culinary world, which Rabbo, you don't know this, but it's been a very short two years, I never had heard the term waterman before. And I'm not from here. Don't get to the East Coast, baby. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, oysters, crabs, all those things we love that are we're hopefully always getting crabs from House Seafood.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

And that's who uh Rabbo is from. It's from How Seafood. So we change it. Name change.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

We changed it a while ago, yeah, when we moved.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Oh, I don't think I just know where I just know who to call and where to pick it up. I'm already I'm already a loyal customer. Name change does nothing for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Rabbo, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell on Kelly right now because I did, I did give her some hints that there was a name change. Yeah, yeah. She didn't do her homework.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

She didn't do her homework. Because I was setting this up. It was setting this up. But I do. I get I get all my crabs from them. I always, because I'm very particular about my crabs. Um we'll get all into that. I you have to be as a Marylander, but I'll we'll get into all that in once we start talking. But let's go ahead, um, Rabbo, and and tell us a little bit about yourself, sir.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Um, I started crabbing when I was probably 12 years old. That was primarily what I did for a long time. Um till I was probably about 19 and started doing HVAC work. So I still crabbed, but I would crab in the morning, go to go to my nine to five job, and um I maintained that for a did that for like 19 years, and then the company I was working for coming to an end. I took that opportunity. We bought a bigger boat and went or started oyster and added oyster into it. Started doing that. Um do a little bit of fishing, but not much, not very often. So it's primarily crabs and fish right now. That's oysters. Oysters, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

And Rabbo, you you're give me a quick geography lesson because I still feel like I'm new to this county. You're in uh Churchden.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Churchon.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah, so and that's a South County.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Well, right on the edge of Shady Side. We still we still say we're in Shady Side. You pretty much are. This is where I've always been in Shadyside.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

So even though Miss Kelly's like one of my sweetest Annapolis friends, I've never been to Shadyside. What's it like?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Um, I mean it's growing a lot. I mean, it's a lot more houses than it was when I grew up there, but um still one road in, one road out.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

A lot of water?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Uh it's a peninsula, so it's surrounded by water, so but yeah, still one road in, one road out. Still the same two grocery stores that's always been there, nothing um really new in shady sidewalk.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

And this and this is the town you grew up in.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I grew up there, yeah. And so we my mom and dad both were from that area too. My mom came down from Pennsylvania when she was young, but um, my dad and my grandparents, my grandfather was a waterman, so that's where I was.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

I was gonna ask you, how do you how do you start crabbing at 12? It must be a family issue.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

It was a family thing. I mean, I just really wanted to that was what I always wanted to do, really. I got went with my grandfather every chance I had and you know, just went from there.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

So I I I've been, I used to go, my uncle used to live down on the shady side. Actually, no, not on the same street as you used to. Um, and uh he had a boat and we would go crabbing all the time. Like get up at five o'clock or four o'clock in the morning, head out by five, you know. I remember uh where the the ladies at the at the at the um the BP station that sold the ch fried chicken, you get the fried chicken from them and you go out on the boat, you know, it was awesome. And I literally could live out there. I could if I I don't I don't know why I never was like, let's turn this into a career, probably because I'm like, I don't I don't know what to do with a boat. I know nothing about it, but I loved being out on the on the foot on the boat early in the morning, nobody else around.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

No, it's definitely nice, it's peaceful.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Are you on the boat now by yourself a lot or do you have a lot of people?

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah, right now I am by myself. I I had a really good worker that I had with me for several years, and then it was time we had a bad we had kind of a bad oyster season coming, and I kind of gave him the heads up like, hey, if you're gonna jump ship, now's the time to do it, kind of thing. Oh, yeah. So he went and found a good job he really liked, so I wasn't begging him to come back. Uh but I've just been by myself probably the past year and a half.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Let's let's kind of touch on that where you said you could see that you're having a bad oyster season. How do you know? Is this the same oyster?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

We started out yeah, well it was it was at the so the beginning of last oyster season. A lot of the oysters in the river where we normally work at. We don't I normally work in the Potux River, so out of Solomon. So a lot of those oysters were smaller, too small, under market size. So you know, w you were scrounging around to find market size oysters. Because we had just come off of a of a die-off where a lot of the uh mature oysters died from disease, you know, which they all have, but when water quality gets condition of the water gets perfect, disease will go rampant, which means like drought. We don't have if we get high salinity, spawn the oysters will spawn really well. It kills off a lot of the so that's why we had a lot of smaller oysters, babies, a lot of babies because they spawned good, but they didn't but all the big ones died. So now that we've got past that point, they're growing really well down there, it's really good, but I could see that coming and just knew that it was gonna be kind of a struggle of a lot of time.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

How long does it take a generation of oysters to mature to market size?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Three years.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Oh yeah, so about three years to grow.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

So um and and they grew really fast down there. This year's been a season like none other for me, honestly. I d I don't know if I've seen this many oysters.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

When does the season start?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

It starts in uh October 1st. It ends March 31st. But they extended our season this year of two two weeks to the 14th, April 14th. Um, because of poor market this year and um a lot of the ice and a lot of guys couldn't get out, so yeah, our harvest numbers are really low this year. Yeah, and it's gonna look like there wasn't any oysters, but it was just that we couldn't sell them and we couldn't get to them when the ice was there. Right. Um market has been a terrible like the worst I've ever seen. And it's it keeps getting worse. I just had really bad news before I got here. So they they hit us with uh a ten dollar decrease per bushel off the boat. So it's like the lowest it's my my grandfather didn't even make this amount of money in the they made more money in the 70s and 80s than we're making right now off an oyster, believe me.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Oh wow. Why can't why do they why do they do that?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Like what they're having a hard time selling them. I mean, it's just what happens if if the South has oysters like Louisiana, Texas, Carolinas, if they have oysters, they don't need our oysters. So we're not shipping out oysters. Market's flooded. We have oysters, they have oysters, everybody's and that drives. It's a good time for oysters, but it's bad for market because it's supply and demand, too much supply, not enough demand. One hurricane or oil spill away from us having market again. Like we literally, if they have a bad time, are we get a good time, you know?

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Is it the same with crabs right now?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

It can be. Um, our demand will be higher if they're not shipping as many up. Same kind of the same thing. You know, they're not if they're not shipping as many into our area.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

So before before we get the crabs, I want to ask another thing about oysters. Because I the whole I grew up with the whole thing like oysters, you only get them with months that have an R in them.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

So, but April has an R in them.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Right. And so they've tightened down our regulations, and again, that falls back to where I say they made more money back 70s and 80s than we're making now because they were allowed to keep more oysters, they got paid more for them, and it's just like blows your mind that that could even be possible in 2026. You know, our taxes and everything you have to do. Yeah, we gotta pay our taxes. They've shortened our season, they've shortened that we have time limits, so we have to start at a certain time, finish by a certain time. Wow. Um, we're allowed to work five days a week. We can't work Saturday or Sunday. So we're not allowed to harvest on Saturday or Sunday. So we only have the five days a week. Yeah. Um, we start at sunrise and around two o'clock if if we make it that far. But right now we're catching them so quick that I'm done some days, 10, 11 o'clock in the morning. I've already got my oysters in back at the pier.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah. So so when you but like I know, how come other is that just a Maryland, like Chesapeake Bay oyster timeline? Because like I know like if it's like June, they'll get like raspberry points or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

And get other things other places.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah, it's just the Maryland timeline. They decided they were gonna cut out a shorten the season a little bit. And that was all their management. It's all management, right? It's just a management practice. But nowadays it's we a lot of the old timers always said that oysters and crabs will manage themselves. And what's meant by that is like right now, for instance, we're allowed to catch 12 bushels a day, but the market can't handle that. So we were only allowed to catch eight bushels a day. So we're catching, we're like, even though we're allowed this amount, we're catching way less than that.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Just because we have nowhere to sell them to if if we catch more than that. Yeah, and we sell a lot ourselves, which is good. Yeah, a lot of our customers. I mean, that's been a big help this year. Because our market was so bad, selling to the public was just a huge help to us.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, and the the oysters are good. We've uh we've done a couple events with your oysters, and everybody's like, oh, what are these? And it's just like that's right from the bay baby.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

They're looking for a big fancy name, and it's just like, oh, they just have to be bay oysters. But they're good.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Yeah, they're good. Uh so let's get back home. Crabs, yeah. Well, not even crabs. I kind of want to I want to jump back to like the three generations deep thing. That's a pretty big deal. Like generational, generational um businesses.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And it and it's more than it's it branches out more than that. I mean, I still have I have cousins that do it. My uncle was in it, well, my grandfather was big in it. Um great uncles, like it just great-great-grandfathers were involved, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

I think they're moving though, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

I think it's one of them. No, no, and Avalon Shores? Yeah. No, no, no, we're not related. Oh, that's a friend of mine, but we're not related. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I thought they were I thought I always thought they they were related.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Okay, well, yeah, not related, but yeah, I know you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

So talk a little bit about what it was like to be a kid growing up in this big family of watermen, and like what did your father and your grandfather teach you that you still use today?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

I mean, pretty nothing has changed from that. Like, like it hasn't evolved. Like the crab pots are still what they were back then, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Isn't that isn't that a little bit like it's like yeah, technology hasn't touched it.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

That hasn't really changed much. I mean, obviously we have better stepfinders and sounders and fish finders and all nowadays than what we did back than they did than they did back then. But other than that, it's basically a lot of it has stayed traditionally the same.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, I also appreciate that you even decided like when you saw that the job, your one job was ending, you're like, you know what, let's just it was that opportunity we took. Let's just jump into something else. Because I think there's a lot of people that get scared and would just be like, oh, I need to go find another job, and not jump into, you know what, this is my life, this is what I know. You know this is my heritage. This is my heritage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah, I mean, I always had that. I mean, like I said, I've always I never stopped crabbing, you know what I mean? I just scaled it back and was going to a normal nine to five every day, and it really wasn't for me anyway.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

So it's something about getting up on Monday and coming home Monday night and getting up Tuesday and you know, that just over that repeat.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

So are you are you now teaching nieces, nephews, kids to to watermen work?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Not really. I mean, there was a time, and I just thought about this really hard the other day when I was we had a watermen's meeting um for Andorona County, and group of us get together and discuss it, and they're always complaining that we don't have any young people coming in, all of you know, and they're aging out, you know. I mean, the people that are involved in the associations and stuff are they're aging out. I mean, there is no younger group coming in, and I'm thinking, you know, what can we do? You know, they're thinking, what can we do to get them involved? And I'm thinking, why would we want to do that to them? You know? I mean, that's where I'm at. This the industry isn't it's not the same, it's not going, it's not progressing, you know, and and less and less people are eating oysters, less and less people eating crabs, and it really the younger generations just don't do it like we grew up doing it. You know, we family used to get together, they used to do it. COVID was during COVID was an eye-opener for me because our sales increased because people were doing things with families again.

SPEAKER_04 15:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

And now we've we've gotten away from it again. It's fallen back to that trend it was before pre-COVID because families aren't getting together. The guys that get a bushel of oysters and hang out in their garage and eat oysters on the weekend, they don't have the younger crowd just doesn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah, Gretchen doesn't get, and I told her I was like, I'm gonna get you, she's been to a crab feast, but I'll but uh we're gonna get you to a crab feast, like a good one. Like, and I remember as a kid, it was bushels and bushels, hundreds of people, rows of chairs. If you you could not pick your crab meat and put it in a pile to save it, that was a no-no. That was open crab meat. Like you do all that work and somebody would take your crab meat? You but you can't, that's that's the point. You cannot leave a lump, and that was in my household. You couldn't leave a lump of fresh crab. You couldn't pick the crab and build your pile and then eat it. No, no, that was up for free grabs. You had to pick and eat. That's the rule. Or I'm telling you, an uncle would come up and grab it.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

I would be so mad.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I remember how hard it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Well, we'll get we'll teach you. It's not as hard as it actually is. It's actually. I don't leave a pile. I just like to have that little bucket of butter and then fill it up with the crab.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

No, no, you can't do it. No, you can't. No, you can't. It's because some you're leaving it open for somebody else's.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

The only one I've ever had crabs with is my husband, and if he touched my crab, we wouldn't have a problem. Are you a butter or vinegar? Vinegar? I've never even thought about vinegar on crab. That sounds good though.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

A lot of times I don't do anything, truthfully. It's just straight crab, but we do, and I I don't know how many other people do this, if this is like a family thing or what. Um, I've seen other people do it. So, but my dad always mixed ketchup and vinegar together with old bay in it. Oh, that sounds wonderful as a dip. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

And if you put the baby potatoes in there, that would be excellent only.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, um, we I do a I mean he he just make a little bowl of it just like butter and just dip his crab in it while he was eating it.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

So this this this authentic crab feast that I haven't been to, is are they still happening in Shady Side? Are you still holding some festivals down there or some places?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Here and there, here and there there are, but there's definitely crab feasts every year. Fall time of the year is when you look for your crab feast. There's definitely plenty plenty of them going on. The Elk Slodge in Deal does, I think, a couple of them a year. Um, that's one.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Um well, and I have to go down and get my shopping fix on in deal, so I don't want to wait till August, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

We'll go. We'll get we'll get you crabs before August, but they are better at the end. I mean, I remember going out with my uncle and we would get and they were huge. Like that's point to point. Like they were heavy suckers too. Huge.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

So now beginning spring and fall. Before they start, you know, in the spring before they start shedding and everything, and you get a lot of lighter ones in there. They're they're very good in the spring and the fall.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

So, not being a Marylander and being here with my children early on, there was a we were uh moved into an area that had a lot of kids, and there was this really nice old man who took my kid down to the pier and he had a bag of chicken necks and he tied it to a string and he dropped it in the water and and pulled up the prettiest blue and red crab, big as my head, that I'd ever seen, and then he he laid it on the deck and it started skittering around about scared me. I almost fell in the water because I was so afraid of it. But it was my son was crazy about pulling up that crab. Oh, that's you would think kids would just be absolutely us busy for hours when we're gonna be able to do that. What a great way to spend a Saturday. Like, why is there if there's sailing camps and why is there not crabbing camps? Solid point.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

There is.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

There is.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Do they allow 50-some-year-old men to be able to do that? I believe they probably cannot be overnight one, Gretchen.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Miller Miller's Island. Miller's Island up by Baltimore. There, there is a program up there that they do, like a crabbing camp. I think they teach you how to make a crab pot. Oh. And then they take you out and catch crabs.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

I would be so down for that. Come come down my way. I'll teach you.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

I'll get you. We'll we'll throw some chicken next to the city. I'm just thinking for the next generation. Like, I can't think of a time my kid's face lit up like it did that day that that man taught him about the chicken necks and the crab.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Well, I I do think it's you're you're talking about screen times and everything. Again, I remember every my grandmother took us out on the pier, and that's what we would do when we were down on Virginia Beach, big pier. It would be a 40-foot drop down down, and we're still pulling crabs up with it on a 40-foot pier, and but it was all the grandkids, and nobody was we weren't misbehaving, we were literally like crabs like there, and then when you got one, it was like so exciting. Because now you have a new friend.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Because well, it was gonna be dinner, so I thought it was a really neat new friend. No, no, no. They're delicious.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Well, my friend, my neighbor gave us a little trick this year, and I'll tell you what, it worked perfection. I gotta remember what it was. Oh, yeah, it where it did maybe this isn't the trick, but something about icing the crabs beforehand. And again, living here, I've learned different tricks over the years, but we ice them before we slow down. Yeah, slows them down, and then but the meat comes right out of the claw, like no, it like it's bro because they're so slow, they don't have a time to get like you know, so so the the meat just slips right out of the crab. So you ice them down before you see them um, you can't think of them as babies. They will they will take your nose off if you let them. I know they probably would, but you are you are dinner to them.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yeah, my I I have trouble with the circle of life. I still am not quite sure that my hamburger comes from that cute little cow. I'm just not gonna allow myself to think that way.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Where does the chicken come from, Mom?

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Wetmans.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Uh that's right. So why did you just let's go back to the name change and thing, because it was housed crabs and seafood.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. Seafood and crabs, I think. Well we moved up. Um Um to the new location where we're at now. We just it was kind of like a fresh start for us.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Oh, okay. No, wait, say more about the the location change. Where were you?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

And so we were we were in in shade farther down in Shady Side and Avon Shore. So now we're at the end of Shadyside Road, which is technically Church then, but it's it's on the main drag, got more room there. Um we're working on getting a shop set up for ourselves there.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Is that gonna be like a market we can come by from?

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yes, yeah, yeah. We're we're trying to get it set up to where we can better serve from from right right from the house, basically.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

No, I'm gonna I'm definitely gonna have you're definitely gonna be involved in the start to finish with this thing. Yeah, I'm gonna go pick them up and show you start to finish.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

I'm in. Okay. I'm yeah, I'm not afraid of this. I'm fascinated by it actually. And the whole idea that like this is and it it is another industry, so I work pretty closely with the farmers because I'm really interested in the regional ag center that that they claim they're gonna, you know, they're studying it, whether you need one or not. What do you think about the regional ag center idea? Would that help you out if they could get something in there for the watermen?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I mean, th there is a lot of crossover now, it seems like. Um, a lot of programs are including aquaculture. Yeah. As far as like a a form of ag now. So and it's a lot of that, I see a lot more of that being publicized now through you know agriculture based groups, you know. Yeah. They're looking at that as I mean, when that's what they're doing, you're you're cultivating the bottom of the bay to grow oysters, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

It's it's a form what is your what is your process look like? Because, like, for instance, working with the farmers, they're really stuck because they are farming what used to be a tobacco plantation. Right. And tobacco didn't need a slaughterhouse or a butchery, right? Right. So now they need these things we don't have, which is why they are considering, you know, building these kinds of facilities to help the farmers have some sort of supply chain into the public. But where is your supply chain going? When you get off the boat, where do your oysters go if they're not selling to the public?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

So right now, when I come as I come back in the creek from being from the work day, yeah, to tie before I tie up, I actually meet a truck and and the boats line up. You know, we come in there and you know, most everybody sells it. They know when you're buying off the lottery, yeah. Most everybody sells to this one buyer in Solomon's now. There used to be several buyers and several options, and the price is more competitive. Now we're down to one buyer, and it's a good one. And those oysters are going on a truck, and they're actually going to a place called Co Art Seafood down in Virginia.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yes. So there are not that many buyers here in Maryland. And kind of the same thing. Like, it was too hard for them to survive here. They couldn't get the workforce. We had all those troubles with the visas, same thing with the crab pickers. Kind of had the same trouble with the with the oyster industry as well. You know, there's not enough people just willing to sit down and shuck oysters all day, you know. So it's a dying industry. And that brought me back to what we were saying earlier about you know bringing the youth into it. It's like, yeah, I don't know if we're doing them any justice by trying to talk them into going into this industry.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

So is there anywhere I'm I'm fairly, fairly well informed around the regs, and it's got to be FDA and USDA approved and all that, but is there any place around here that does like just oyster shucking and crab pick-in?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

There there is. I mean, you have uh you have Paris' crab crab house over here. They have a big oyster shucking facility in there. I mean, they so they're a food processor, yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

So they're taking the oysters to the next level and then selling the product to restaurants.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

They're going to restaurants. I think at one time they were selling to like Sam's Club and some of the bigger chains too. Um same thing with like cohort where we sell too. Um they're another big industry. So it's not basically move a lot of product, but they also give back to can't say give back, but they sell back to Maryland. So we take our oysters up, we pay a tax on them, we sh ship them to Virginia and pay a another tax basically. So they get there, and then the state of Maryland actually ends up buying the shelves back in the bay. From Virginia to put them back here.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Oh gosh. You know, so it's like Well, have you do you sell direct to restaurants?

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Like, is that I do sell as you know, when we have them, we do sell to them. I mean, it's a lot of restaurants have gotten I I had a guy that would come and he would buy a lot of oysters from me, and I lost that market to basically Cisco because they started selling Flash Fers and oysters on the half shell already. So the restaurant started buying already for you know half-shelled oysters, so they didn't have to have somebody handle the oysters when they got to the uh that's just weird. We lost you know that that was a big market for us.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

I thought I was about to lose my shit when I saw that they had avocado peeled and you know, nutted avocado like in a in a saran sucked bag. And I'm like, you you're kidding me, right? Like an avocado is not hard. And that's easier than getting into an oyster, but no, Cisco, you ruined everything.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

So they got that market. Um, but the the place we sell to down in Virginia that those oysters go to, they're doing the same thing now. They've got on board with that, and they are he's really all his advertisements now on Facebook are showing like you know, flash fur's and oysters on the half shell already being shipped out and ready to go. So it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I understand that's the first time.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

I mean it's for convenience and they're moving product. So I mean if he can move product, hopefully that helps me in the long run, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:01

But I get I get the idea of the the the doing it in flash furze and and shipping it to like somebody wants I need Chesapeake oysters, whatever. Okay, fine. I don't understand doing that for a restaurant, other than obviously labor.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

That's what it was. It was it was labor-intensive, and they had to have somebody to there to take care of it, so now they just pull a tray out of the freezer and thaw it out and serve it.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah, it's not the same, it's not the same.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

We'll head into another topic. Who knows? This is this is where I continue to think that this has to stop because what else do they have to do to that oyster to make it okay for as long as they want it to live in that frozen environment? The further you get away from the processing of your food, the more agency you give away. And that's why we have metabolic disease, and that's why we have obesity, and that's why we have the lifestyle issues that we have. So, you know, Kelly is scratch made, you're you know, harvesting like right at the beginning of the of the process, and I think it's really important that we have these conversations about the oysters leave Maryland, go to Virginia, we we import the shells back into the bay. Like that's the kind of stuff that conversations can inform. And I do think that our kids are gonna change their mind about eating processed food. I do think that the next generation is gonna learn from all of the tragedy of how our generation ages. And and they're gonna, they're gonna they're gonna pendulum swing back. This is my hope and my mind.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

I am I am hoping I'm already trying to teach that to my kids because I mean the amount of shit garbage.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Well, my kids don't want my food anymore because they just want your food.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

So my kids don't want my food.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

So why don't we switch? We can switch kids. You can trade children. I mean just trade food. No, I was gonna say I'll take Charlie.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

You can eat Jack. You can make Charlie. She's you want you think you're busy now.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Carting her ass all over the place. So so Zoe and and uh Julia are part of your business as well, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Definitely, definitely. I mean they use I lean on them all the time for help. So Julia does all the Facebook stuff because I'm not gonna be very good at that. So me either. Yeah, so she does all that. I mean, she answers calls and questions and all kinds of stuff all the time for me, especially when we're on the boat. I mean, they always help me get started in the day when I get home. Well, and your wife's always like all over the place. I mean, she's got playing field hockey and lacrosse right now. So um, she's 15. She actually just got her uh learner permit today. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Oh my gosh. I have like another like eight months.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

No, it'll definitely be it'll be a relief to Julia when she can drive. So Julia's not humping around all these things.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

It's an amazingly liberating thing when your kid learns to drive.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

And when they can get home groceries.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

When they can really become your little middle.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

It's almost like I'm waiting for Fletcher. His next his next birthday is well no, he's 20. No, it's only 20. So I have another year before I can be like, Can you go run to the liquor store and buy me a bottle of wine? Here's your note, honey.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Just give it to the liquor guy. I know your wife is we we fondly and lovingly call her the mayor of South County. Like we she's an amazing, she's an amazing business partner from that aspect. She's known and loved, and I'm sure she is.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

She definitely tries to do the best that she can to be involved with the community and help things along. I I really do. She does do that. She's always involved with something. So I'm always on her about being too involved with things, but we can't help it. I gotta I gotta help her scale back sometimes, I feel like, because she gets too too much on her plate. But no, she definitely does, she's definitely always involved. She wants to be involved with it.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Talk about the investment in Churchon right now. It what what is it right now and what is your vision for? Because it sounds like it's gonna there's gonna be a marketplace there.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

I mean, we're just trying to get set up. We our main goal right now is to get set up to where we can shuck oysters in-house into quartz and pints and and sell that way. I mean, we're already you'll be a processor. We're already a seafood processor technically, because we can, you know, we sell the oysters to the public and we have to be health department approved and all that. We've we've gotten that far, but we have to do the next step to get everything all our in line to they're happy that we can allow us to shuck the oysters and sell the product that way.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Well, if I send people down to you for a you'll have to let me know for uh education on shucking oysters. Let me get my ladies oyster shucking qualifications here. Because I want to start, I need to start promoting. We need to do more. I I think you're right. I do remember it being so much more crab feast, family parties, family picnics, and it's not like that anymore.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, it's just not as often that you see that. I mean, we still have our regular customers that come all summer long, buy crabs a bushel at a time, because their families get together. I mean, we still have that. It's not lost, but I don't I think the younger generation is losing a grip on it. They're not doing it as often.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

I know it was a few years in between us getting them, and it just became just schedule related. You know what I mean? Just like everything was just so whatever. But I I know like two years ago, I made like I know it was after COVID. I made, I was like, we are going to do crabs a couple times a year. Like that's I'm we have to do that. Because it was like, I'm like, where why we live here? What are we doing?

SPEAKER_02 33:47

So, Kelly, once your house is done, can we do a team? Oh, a thousand percent crab down there? All right, that's gonna be after bowling.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Oh yeah, it's gonna be amazing. We'll start to finish. I'll I'll show you how to do it. It's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

And we'll and we'll even go pick them up from the Well, that's what I was gonna ask. So, Bravo, what can I do as a person who wants to bring people back shopping local for watermen? What can I do to sort of shortcut that that supply chain issue and and support local watermen?

SPEAKER_00 34:22

I mean, just buying from local watermen directly from there's so many of us that sell directly nearly.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

How do I know I'm getting direct from Maryland Chesapeake Bay Watermen versus somebody who's just a fish marks?

SPEAKER_00 34:35

So, like we are we got qualified for it last year to be true blue. So if you see that we only sell Maryland products.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Crab. We'll make sure that makes into the True Blue note. True Blue is is a true sign that you know storefront or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

So is there a website that has like the list of the names?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah, I would I I think there is. Um I'll get Julia on the street. Yeah, Julia will be on the she's the one that got us involved with that. Um anyway, so she knows all the ins and outs of that.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

But now when you're out there and you're getting the oysters and the crabs, I know it's a different mechanism than a normal fisherman, but did you do you bring other things up? Like are there fish?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah, I mean, this bycatch for instance. I mean, when we're when we're crabbing, we'll catch fish, you know, in the crab pot sometimes. Are you allowed to bring that home? And we can bring those back in. Yeah, we do. Um, we usually like if we catch white perch, you know, that's always a good seller in our area, so we'll bring those home and sell.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

You see a lot of blue catfish?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

We are seeing them. Um, I didn't see as many last year, and I think it was because of the salinity got had gotten kind of high in our area, and then that tends to push them up farther up into the rivers and farther up the bay. But um, there's definitely a lot of them. There's there's no shortage on those right now.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Well, so that was part of the conversation, and this was just a quick there, they've got a consultant that's doing the feasibility study for the regional ag center, and part of the conversation was could we incent fishermen to catch the blue catfish if there was a processing plant for them?

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

At the regional ag center. Yeah, that would be a yes, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

And that would be a yes, that would be definitely a yes. I mean, especially if like individual shops could bring them because that's the problem right now is being uh it's FDA certified, you know, so to clean the catfish, I mean, and that's the biggest side. A lot of the mama shop pops aren't certified, so they're not able to clean them. So they have to either buy them somewhere else that's already cleaned or whatever, but yeah, yeah, it's not a simple thing, it doesn't sound like it. It sounds like it's pretty complicated.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

So I mean, yeah, anything like that probably would help the industry. But I know they are looking at I've seen uh where they're serving catfish at the schools over in on the eastern shore. Some of the schools have it now, and it seemed like it went over pretty good. So I mean, I think if they went that route, or maybe they looked at prisons, like serves serving. I love being a fish stick, yeah. In the prisons, I mean anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

I can try any kind of fish, and I will well no, I'm I even like the fact that they're doing a blue cat for the schools over there, like instead of like a a freeze-dried chicken pack. Right, right, right. You know what I mean? Like, okay, that makes a lot of fun. It definitely makes a lot of sense. And then of course you talk about the jails. I'm like, okay, why I didn't think of that? Because like in New England, that's all that ate the lobsters. Yep. Or the people in jail, not the rich people. Right. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

So I mean they're they're definitely they're exploring ideas right now. They're they're gonna do it out there.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

You just gotta like do the milk bath with the blue cat, though. You know, you gotta let it make it. Yeah, it can be.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

It can be a little it can be a little gamey. Yeah, so that's a trick, guys.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

You get blue cat, you just gotta you gotta soak it in milk overnight.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Yeah, it's uh takes a little bit of that gamey taste out of it. Yeah. So go ahead. Oh, yeah. I was gonna ask quickly, just because I again hear about it, but don't really have a connection to it. What's the health of the bay like to you now compared to like when you were a kid?

SPEAKER_00 38:02

I think I mean for some reason water clarity is definitely better now than when I was a kid. It was definitely more murkier. Yeah, I think. It's gotten clearer, I think. Why that is, I don't really know. It could be a good thing or a bad thing to why that is, but I mean, I definitely think it's gotten better. I mean, we've done they're constantly doing things that are helping, um, you know, like storm runoff, ponds and parking lots now, and I think that's a big help if we can slow down the runoff. I mean, settlement is a huge issue for us, um, especially when it comes to oysters, you know. If if bottoms aren't getting worked, and that's a big controversial thing with like the sanctuary bottoms right now. We have so much bottom in sanctuary that is underfunded that can't be that isn't getting utilized. So it's not getting worked, they're not doing any restoration efforts on it because they don't have the funding to cover how many acres that they have. So they're only touching a small part of it. So when they took the sanctuary, when they brought in sanctuaries, they took away oyster bottom. Okay. So those were working oyster bars that they put in the sanctuaries, and a big percentage of them are just sitting there. So those oysters have aged out, died, the shells are there, maybe some of them are reproducing, and but I've come to find that we're if we're not working those bottoms and not bringing those shells back up out of the settlement, there's nowhere for the baby larvae to stick to. That's why the shell is always so important to us to get the shells back so we can replant oysters. And I mean, they're working on coming up with some ideas now, but there's a lot of pushback from like Chesapeake Bay Foundation on it because the sanctuaries are their babies, you know. They that the sanctuary is where the reason they get so much funding.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

And if we take some of that sanctuary back, that's there's no middle ground there though. Like we can't find one. It's it's a struggle. I mean, I I go to all the OAC meetings in Annapolis, and it's just it's like watching tug of war. It's just nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to get out.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yeah. So how explain to me, because like when you shuck an oyster, the top comes off and the bottom comes off, and then you put them back in the bay. It's not like um uh sand crab, you know, that goes inside a shell and then it's now my new home, you know, and walks away. How does that how do you get the the baby into the shell and then it gets two shells?

SPEAKER_00 40:28

So when they spawn, the larvae actually sticks to the shell. When it sticks to the shell, it grows its own shell. So the the shell on the bottom is just a substrate for the baby to stick to, put it that way. Like that larvae will stick to it. You can have one shell where five larvae stick to it, and you got five baby oysters growing off of one shell.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

And they're gonna grow their own nose. Oh, they grow their own too.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

So when we so we have a small lease in Rose River, and what we do is we take all the shells that we get back from all our customers, we always ask for them to bring them back. We we bag them up in the in the mesh bags, we put them in a tank, we circulate salt water through them, and we actually buy larvae from a lab. So literally, we I can show you a picture on the phone. We have two million larvae in the palm of my hand. So two million baby oysters will fit right in the palm of your hand.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Really?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Yes. So, and we take those oysters and we add it to the tank that the shells are in with the water circulating in it. That larvae then goes to the tank, attaches. We take those bags out, dump them on our lease, and the oysters will grow from there. But you literally have one shell that'll have maybe even 15 larvae attached to it.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

And when you say lab grown, so the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

So what they do is they actually take oysters from from the wild, take them off the bottom, they set them up in a lab in their own little tank. They make the water temperature, the salinity, everything perfect for them, and that's when the oysters will spawn. When they spawn, they'll actually spawn them into a tank. The larvae will start to grow in that tank, and they actually strain them out of the tank into a coffee filter. So when we buy the larvae, it comes in a coffee filter.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Like two million baby oysters wrapped up in a coffee filter.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

That's literally how we receive them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

So is there is there any population problem like this with crabs? Uh as far like do we have to are we overfishing crabs by any me stretching? It amazes me how many crabs we eat.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

So I'm like exactly a concern. Um, but they come, they go, they have good years, they have bad years. I mean, sometimes you have winters where a lot more will die over the winter um than other winters. So it's just it's a cycle. How are we looking this way? Up and down, up and down. I haven't seen this year's survey, which I mean, we always always joke that if we get a bad survey, that's a good thing for us because we're gonna have a good year. Oh, is that right? That's how that's how we feel about the survey. It's like a bad survey means a good year, good survey means eh, maybe it's not gonna be so good, but it's it's hit and miss. So I don't I don't solely base my business off of their survey for sure.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

And you can only take crabs at a certain size, right? Yeah, you have to have a couple of things.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

So they're five inches in the beginning of the season and then mid-season, they'll switch over to five and a quarter inches.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

So we're throwing back all those small, small crabs.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Um give them a chance to get big.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yeah, now we have they they so I guess this will this will probably be the fourth year now, third or fourth year that they implemented male limits. We we since I've always since I've crabs, we've always had a female limit, you know how many we can catch. Now we have male limits, and that usually starts in around August. Um Um, so they actually limit per license, like so if you have a 300 crab pot license, you're allowed X amount of mails a day. Nine hundred pots allowed a few more, you know. So they manage it that way now. Um I don't know that that's helping or hurting at this point.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

It just Not yet.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Yeah, it's it's uh uh you know it was supposed to be like a pilot program, but it seems like it's here to stay. Oh, has it gone away and there's no give back on that at whatsoever because they haven't seen the results they thought they would see.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

So they're gonna wait for more.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

So they're gonna make wait for the results to get better before they give anything back or not.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Or till they prove their point. Um so like let's say I take Gretchen crabbing off the edge of a duck with a with my crab with my with my stinky chicken wings.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Gotta be stinky. Leave that shit out overnight. And I take her out to do the thing. Because like when I was growing up, I was always taught females go back.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

But you guys can catch females.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

We can we can catch the females. I mean, females is a big market in Maryland because that's pretty much where your crab cakes are coming from. Those females end up in the picking houses.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Oh, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Because like I know that so there is a rule though. Is that rule still the same about like if me and Gretchen are just hanging out at my pier, we have to throw back the females because recreational is not allowed to keep them.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

And we're limited now, and this year's even I think less. We're allowed to catch less. So they base it off of their survey what we're allowed, you know, what our limits will be. And it they can change over the summer or whatever. By the fall, we could have less or more, whatever. Um so but but they do limit each license on what they can catch. Recreational is not allowed to catch any females, whether you're off the pier or you're troutlining, you know, recreational-wise.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Which is funny to me because like I was told growing up, it's like, no, you get the the female crabs need to have the babies. Like you put them back, but I think they can only have babies once, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:57

So I don't I'm not the scientist for this, but so my understanding is that females can only mate one time, which when they're soft crabs, that's when they mate. So once they harden back up and a female becomes a mature female, her chance to mate is while she's soft. So that's why the males double up with them and hold on to the little small female crabs because when she molts or you know, sheds her shell, she'll turn into the mature female. They'll mate, she'll harden back up, and he'll release her. So he protects her while she's soft.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Oh I was thinking it was a little bit more vengeful than that, but okay, I have that that warms my heart. That is so sweet.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Right? Uncle, I'll be yourself. So she'll so once once she hardens back up, the the eggs will start to form and they grow under the apron. So you'll see that you can see the eggs on them, you know, big bulbs under the apron of eggs. Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

I've pulled out a couple of them. They're like yellow. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

So and I am like so missing out on this whole color.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

So like I want to see this. It's cool.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

So so then then my understanding is she'll never mate again, but she can bear eggs again. So once she releases those eggs, there's a potential that she could bear eggs again after that.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Without mating.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Without mating.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

Well, and they're viable eggs. Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 47:36

I don't believe so no. No. No, what I mean the eggs are just you know, they turn into the basically little larvae that's in the water and they grow into the second, but there's so there's no female male penetration.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

So the female crab is no female. So the female crab is.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

If she was gonna bear it the first time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

So he protects the female and doesn't get shit out of it? Damn.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

They do though. The first time, while she saw it, they actually mate.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

So there is that penetration. She heard it. That that all shot, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

He gets one shot, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

But does that one shot stay there for however long enough?

SPEAKER_00 48:18

That's what it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

She can basically store that inside of her and she can have my recollection. This is like as far from being technical, I guess, as it can be. But that's how my mystery.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Kelly and I have reimagination.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

We're we're we're writing our own stories now. That's my take on it.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

I like the take. I like the take.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

Um, so let's talk a little bit about like the the the the other like other stuff you're doing. So you also are out in the community. So you're a shucking oysters, you're at events. Yeah, we do events.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Um we did quite a few events for the Elks Lodge and deal. Um we just did the last one we did was the Ducks Unlimited. Um, me and a friend of mine do that one. I actually helped him on that one.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

Um is this something like Kelly could could call you up and we could include you in events up here?

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah, I go wherever and shuck oysters whenever we can. We I take on oh wait, for real?

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm always looking for an oyster shucker. Yeah, yeah. We're mobile.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

No, we go to we do several events throughout the year where we shuck oysters, bowling oyster roasts, and things like that. Nice. Me and me and a buddy of mine will go. Are your wheels turning, Kelly?

SPEAKER_02 49:34

No, they are because my wheels are turning.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

With the snowstorm, because I got the oysters from you for the for the visit to Annapolis, Gala, that was unfortunately, thank you, Mother Nature. Oh my goodness. Cancelled. Uh, and Michael, out of the 600, Michael shucked 400, and he was like, it got to a point he's like, I just done.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

It's like a and I was like, Julia told me that, and she's like, I feel so bad that she got stuck with those oysters. She just she should have just said something, we would have worked it out.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

No, no. I I mean I was able, I I did, we shucked them, we froze them, I did do a lunch thing.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

It was totally, man. Nobody was making it out of that alive. No, that was that that's one for the books. We'll we'll be talking about Ace Geddon to our kids 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Let's let's hope. No, I don't even want to bring it up again. I don't want to give her the idea. I don't want her to make that never do that. That's an unusual thing. Right. Um, so what do you guys when you guys you talk about your Worcesterman? Watermen group. I'm sure there's females in there, right? And we say waterman, water.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

We can't manage that stuff ourselves. There's websites involved and Facebook pages, and we're not doing that.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Look, look, you know your you know your role.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

Obviously, you know Jolia's secretary of the Watermen's Association. Is she really? No wonder why she's gonna be. I'm not at all surprised. Of course she is.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

No wonder why you gotta tell her to back off sometimes. Um what what do you guys talk about? What do you discuss in these meetings?

SPEAKER_00 51:04

I mean, I'm a lot of times it's it's mostly legislation. You know, I mean, whatever's coming down the road, something that's gonna help or hurt us, kind of thing. That's that's a lot of it right now.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

I'm more curious about your conversations on the boat. And do you with myself? Just you?

SPEAKER_01 51:22

You don't have nobody out there. Well, you should not not right now. You let the guy go because oyster season wasn't good. Were you here at the beginning of the podcast?

SPEAKER_00 51:31

But I will say, I will say when usual occurrence. When I had my help with me, JP, when he was with me.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Oh, yeah, it was JP? Oh, that's fun. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

So Columber, you know him? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

I imagine you gotta have if you're 22, you gotta do that.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

We used to talk that if there was a hidden camera on this boat, we'd make millions on our conversations. Like it got it got kind of ignorant sometimes on short, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

And so But that would that's what makes it fun. You gotta have somebody on the boat tolerate for exactly.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

We worked, we got a lot to accomplish. So he was good. He was a good worker.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Yeah, it's uh it's uh because he used to sell the trees with the Boy Scouts. That's how that's how I know the the Boy Scouts. My husband knows them much better, but he he is a good kid. That's it's he's always involved in doing stuff. And I'm glad to hear that he got a really nice job. That's good. Yeah. Um are we up for a lightning round?

SPEAKER_02 52:24

I think we're up for a lightning round. All right. Do you know what a lightning round is, Robin? We're gonna ask you a series of questions. Don't overthink it. First thing that comes to your mind, just shout it out. Then we're gonna move on to the next question.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Aren't even gonna question it. Not gonna question the answers or the questions.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Kelly, you want to start it off? Okay. I already know the answer to a couple of these. Okay. Steamed crabs or live crabs?

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Steamed?

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Like, I would how how do you want to ask that question? Because that's weird. Well, where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 52:56

I guess technically I want I want to say live because I want to be able to sell them.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

There you go. I say I get them if I was going to purchase them, I want them live because I want to steam them.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

I am getting steamed because I don't even want to know how they got to be steamed. Well, I don't want to.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

And I don't want to hear the little scream. I don't see do they scream from the do they scream?

SPEAKER_00 53:16

I've never heard a screen screen that's like.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

It's the whistle from the traumatizing me.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

Go ahead. All right, Rabba.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

Old day or JO spice.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah. Really? Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Favorite time of the year on the bay.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

I think winter.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Really?

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

It's not cold. You don't get cold?

SPEAKER_00 53:36

I do get cold. I do, but I r I like I love oystering. I really do.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

Oh, even more than the crabin. What's the what's what's the difference? Not to I know it's a terrible lightning round, but why why is oystering different so different than crabs?

SPEAKER_00 53:50

I mean, every everything about it is different. I mean, for one, oysters don't move, so we don't have to constantly try to find them.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

True.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Yeah, once you find them, you know where they're at, you know.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

True, true.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

That makes a lot of sense. They're not skittering around. Okay. So what's the crab picking skill you're most proud of?

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Crab picking skill? I don't know. I don't really eat that many crabs. Oh. We try to sell them all.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Hot day. Hot day. I know. Uh let's see. One of your one food that pairs perfectly with a dozen of crabs. I know, corn and baby potatoes.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Yeah. And and baby carrots. Have you ever put baby carrots in your steam pot? Well, we've done the potatoes, the carrots, you put the little baby carrots in there. Oh, okay. The carrots will suck up the seasoning and they are good.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Oh, I'm gonna try the carrots. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

All right. All right, Rabba, what's the best kept secret in Shady Side or South County?

SPEAKER_00 54:48

Hmm. I don't know. There's no secrets down there.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

No secrets? I don't know. I don't know. There's a whole bunch of good stuff down there. I didn't know about. Yeah, if you're from there, everybody knows it. Yeah. You just gotta come visit to find out what it is. Fresh seafood. What, down there? Jady. Yeah, and get it right off the bat. Alright, so if you couldn't be a watermelon. I was about to say watermelon. If you couldn't be a waterman, what would you be?

SPEAKER_00 55:18

I really don't know. However, I did just finish my CDL class. So I just got a CDL license, a class A CDL license, or maybe a truck driver.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Uh-oh. Uh-oh, Julia, watch out.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Yep. She's already told me I'm not allowed to be on the road truck driver.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

Oh, she doesn't want to go into life with you.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

I told her, so we just sell it all, buy a truck, and travel the country. They have beds in them, right? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:41

That's what I'm saying. Julie be that little true be the mayor of wherever you're going. She just tells her one day. She'd know where everybody was.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

She was interested in that one.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

Oh, oh, well, we'll talk her into it. Alright, one thing you want every tourist visiting Annapolis to do.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Buy local seafood.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Buy local seafood. Absolutely. And oysters on the hot half shell. Uh squeeze a lemon, or do you dress it up? Or do you bake them?

SPEAKER_00 56:11

On the half shell, I kind of just like them plain.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Just suck it down. Just suck it down.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

If it's raw. If it's if we steam them on the half shell, we always do cheese, bacon, and hot sauce.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Oh, okay. All right. All right. No vignette, no cheese. We keep it simple, cheese, bacon, and hot sauce. All right. I like it. I do like bacon on oyster. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Rabbo, this conversation has me so ready for visiting South County, getting a real crab feast under my belt, and I want to go out on your boat.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

All right. That's all I needed. I just needed that invitation. We could do a Facebook live and Facebook. Facebook live off of Rabbo's boat.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Please, please, please. Yes, yes. I'm down. I'm totally doing cold. All right, but it's got to be warmer. No, I agree. I'm not doing cold. I'm not doing cold. What when what what time do we have to be there? And where do we have to be?

SPEAKER_00 57:00

Well, shady side in during the summer, usually like 4 30.

SPEAKER_02 57:05

In the morning?

SPEAKER_00 57:06

In the morning.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

I can do five. I'm 40 girl. I can do 50. You are. I am so a morning girl. Now, once we're out on the game.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

If you go in, Krab, and you gotta at least be out there for the sunrise. So of course, a thousand years. You can't miss that part.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

If if if you can't, if you don't want us on the boat anymore, is it a problem for you to miss that? Okay. I'm just saying a lot. We'll set this up. I think that would be great. It's gonna be amazing. We're doing this.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

And again, I haven't been out in a long time since my uncle left the area. So I'm like, I'm I would do that.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Well, this will be very sentimental for you, but I love I am an anthropologist. I love stepping into other people's lives, and this is such a fascinating life. And I know this has been you know three generations for you, but I think there's something probably so magical in there that is worth hanging on to and is worth um inspiring into our kids. So if this conversation does a little bit of that and then a little bit of the Facebook Live to like get people interested in doing it, I think that would be great.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

And even more interested in eating seafood from your local water people, yeah, local restaurants, support your local water. True blue, true blue. Yes, true blue, true blue. All right, Robert, this has been great. And it has. So thank you so much for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

You've been a delight, and uh thank you, Annapolis, for tuning in.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

Where every voice tells our story.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Keep on the conversation coming. I will get this one day.