Half of "Maryland Crab" Not from Maryland: Study

Maryland diners who think they’re supporting the local seafood industry by ordering blue crab at restaurants often aren’t getting what they pay for, says a new study.

The conservation group Ocean released a study Wednesday that says mislabeling of the iconic Chesapeake Bay blue crab is widespread; almost half of the samples take from restaurants in the Annapolis and Baltimore areas were found not to be the crab billed on menus.

Oceana collected crab cakes from 86 restaurants throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., then used DNA testing to confirm that 38 percent were mislabeled. Instead of using locally caught blue crab as advertised, the crab cakes contained imported substitutes.

Mislabeled crab cakes were found in every city the group tested, including rates of 47 percent in Annapolis, 46 percent in Baltimore, 39 percent in Washington, D.C., 38 percent in Ocean City and 9 percent on the Maryland Eastern Shore.

Where do you find the best local crab? Which restaurant has the tastiest crab dish? Tell us in comments.

Forty-eight percent of the crab cakes tested used crabs from the Indo-Pacific region (44%) and the Mexican Pacific coast (4%), the study says.

U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said the mislabeling cheats local watermen of profits and misleads consumers.

“This report confirms what my constituents have been telling me — U.S. crabmeat is competing against less expensive foreign crabmeat fraudulently labeled as a U.S. product,” Mikulski told The Baltimore Sun.

When James Barrett, executive chef at the Azure restaurant at the Westin Hotel in Annapolis, found out his crab cakes were on the mislabeled list he told the Sun he had to sit down to take in the news. “I’ve been paying $30 per pound for local crab meat!”

The crab switch inflates the price for consumers, promotes imported and sometimes illegally caught crab as local seafood, prevents consumers from making sustainable seafood choices, and harms the livelihoods of local watermen and seafood businesses, said Beth Lowell, senior campaign director at Oceana.

Crab cakes were considered to be mislabeled if they were described on the menu or server as containing blue crab or as sourced from Maryland or the Chesapeake Bay region, but were comprised of completely different crab species.

Oceana’s crab cake samples were collected during the 2014 Maryland crab season.

To access Oceana’s full report and other materials, visit www.oceana.org/crabfraud.

»Photo of Maryland blue crab from NOAA