Blue Crab Print
Blue Crab Print
Size
12 × 12 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.
Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.
Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.
A male drawn in stipple from a specimen taken at Wood's Holl in 1882, every spine and paddle in place.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 006
From the book
- Species
- Callinectes sapidus
- As named in the book
- The Common Edible or Blue Crab; Callinectes hastatus Ordway.
- Artist
- J. H. Emerton
- Book
- The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, Sec. I, pl. 267, 1884
“…feet blue; tips of fingers and spines reddish.”
Then and now
Mary Rathbun renamed it Callinectes sapidus in 1896, "savory beautiful swimmer."
Field notes
Callinectes sapidus means "savory beautiful swimmer."
Emerton drew this crab in 1882 from a male caught at Wood's Holl, Massachusetts: every spine along the shell, and at the back the flattened, paddle-shaped last legs that make it such a fast swimmer. The book could only describe its color: "…feet blue; tips of fingers and spines reddish."
Watermen read a crab by its belly. A male is a jimmy, with a narrow apron shaped like an upside-down T. An immature female is a sally, her apron a V. A mature female is a sook, her apron wide and rounded. Sooks travel down the Chesapeake to the saltier water near its mouth to spawn, each carrying up to about three million eggs.
A crab's shell doesn't grow, so the crab has to leave it. In the hours after a molt, before the new shell hardens, it's a soft-shell.