About Island Crab Company

Island Crab is located in St. James City, Florida, which is on Pine Island on the Gulf of Mexico in SW Florida. We have been in business since March of 1992. We buy fresh seafood from approximately 20-30 commercial boats. We started the business in one bay of a six bay unit with a desk and a lamp. Since then we have filled all six bays with coolers, freezers, a picking room, ice machines and a full time office. We have steamers and boilers for cooking blue crabs and stone crabs. We buy blue crabs, stone crabs, many varieties of fish, oysters, Pine Island clams, blue crab picked meat of which there are four varieties: jumbo lump, lump, cocktail fingers and claw meat. We also make crab cakes and stone crab dipping sauce. Our independent commercial fishing fleet consists of stone crabbers, blue crabbers, cast netters and grouper fishermen. They all work for themselves and sell their products to whomever they want. We have a very loyal and great bunch of fishermen. Our facility is H.A.C.C.P. approved, which means that we have to "jump through a lot of hoops" for the state and federal government to be able to bring you the best products available. We recently joined hands with the "World Famous Pincher's Crab Shack" of which there are seven locations throughout Southwest Florida from Sarasota to Naples. Their motto is "You Can't Fake Fresh" and we help supply them with that "fresh" part. Stone crab season runs from October 15th through May 15th. That means you can get fresh stone crabs for seven months of the year. We also offer fresh picked blue crabmean and crab cakes year round. Stone crab harvest goes like this. The fishermen put their traps out in the water by October 5th. They soak for 10 days to get the "stink" off of them and on the 15th of the month they pull them for the first time. They take the stone crabs out of the trap and measure the claw, which must be at least 2 3/4 inches in length and they are allowed to take both claws if they are large enough. The stone crabs will grow them back in a year and they can still function and eat without claws. The claws cannot be removed from an egg bearing female crab. The fisherman brings these claws into th fish house and they are cooked, put in ice water to stop the cooking process and put in the cooler for the night. In the morning they are graded into three sizes before being sold to the local wholesale dealers and restaurants and now folks like you who can't get them at your local grocery store.

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