Crab picking is hard work, and requires a lot of skill to do quickly and without getting bits of shell in the meat. Not just anyone off the street can walk in a

Crab picking is hard work, and requires a lot of skill to do quickly and without getting bits of shell in the meat. Not just anyone off the street can walk in and do the job. These businesses are built around a decades-long, 100% legal, guest worker program that suddenly failed them. In addition, the lack of pickers harms not just the picking businesses, but also all the watermen who fish for crabs. To compound the issue, these businesses are located in rural areas where there just aren’t very many people around to do the work. And, this is seasonal work - anyone local who takes the job will be laid off in the Fall, and then won’t come back next year (because they will have found another job, ideally), so their training is lost.