Crab Jubilee - Okay, I'll admit it. I'm 50. Fifty is the new 40 you know (But, of course, in my case it's the new 30). Since I'm being honest about my age I have no problem telling you some of the things I remember about the Old Florida. That's the Florida that came WAY before the internet . . . heck that's the Florida that came WAY before Cable television and the 8-Track (if you don't remember 8-tracks, they came WAY before CDs).

When I was a kid we would finish our hastily prepared dinner, load the Igloo cooler with snacks and head to Santa Rosa Island (Pensacola Beach). We would pull the battery out of the car - no kidding - plunk it in a galvanized tub sitting in an inner tube and connect it to lights we floated on the water. My grandfather would tie the inner tube to his belt loop with a rope and pull the entire contraption behind him as we walked through the Santa Rosa Sound (Intracoastal Waterway), nets in hand. What in God's name were we doing you ask? CRABBING - this is the way you caught your fill of Blue Crab in those days and as a kid, it was more fun that Halloween and the Interstate Fair all wrapped into one.

Now, this is a thing most people have never witnessed, but I count myself among the lucky few (relatively speaking) who have been on the beach at the height of a Jubilee. The biologists will tell you a Jubilee occurs when there is too little oxygen in the water and the crabs make their way to the shore. I will tell you that a Jubilee is a CRAZY TEAMING MASS of Blue Crab making their way to shore by the hundreds of thousands come hell or high water.

I have only seen one Jubilee in my adult life (a small one at that), so I suspect we have done something to alter our environment in such a way as to eliminate this amazing phenomenon. But I cherish the memory of being a child, dozing off in the back seat of a Ford Fairlane, surrounded by buckets of Blue Crab, bubbling their last breaths as we trundled down the highway toward a backyard overflowing with aunts, uncles and cousins all gathered around a bonfire prepared just for one of our southern crab boil get-togethers.

Crab Jubilee - The Florida Panhandle

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