Florida’s Red Tide Killing Stone Crab Business. Crabbers Going Out of Business. Joe’s Stone Crabs Changes Its Menu
You know the toxic red tide in south Florida is serious when Joe’s Stone Crabs, the world-famous seafood restaurant in Miami Beach, starts to run out of stone crabs. But the stone-crab crisis is indeed serious, and it’s decimating the stone-crab fishing industry. “This is about the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Rick Collins, 69 and an Everglades City crabber for more than 50 years, told The New York Times. Until this year, he usually caught 400 pounds of stone crabs a day. One day recently he offloaded 73 pounds, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can stay…