Two Gloucester Point watermen harvested a true rarity from the waters of the York River recently—a “true-blue crab.”
Jim McInteer and his mate Alan Payne were working their pots when Payne noticed the unique specimen.
“We were excited about it,” said McInteer. “Alan yelled, ‘Come look at this crab!’… I’d read about how they occur every now and then, so we knew what we had.”
McInteer is 73 years old and has decades of experience crabbing, both commercially and recreationally. He said that, while he had seen discolored or mostly-blue crabs before, he had never encountered a specimen like this.
It was then donated to Professor Rom Lipcius, an expert on crustacean ecology for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point. “The blue color is most likely a genetic abnormality,” Lipcius said.
The specimen was frozen for later study. Lipcius said that this is the first blue crab of its kind reported to ...