Davie, FL - The seductive, glittery glow of downtown Miami fills the night horizon. The men gaze longingly at the sight. Anticipation pumps through their veins. They can sense the ripe vibrations in the South Florida air, still thick in late October. It’s after 8 PM, but these guys aren’t prepared to hit the clubs of South Beach or cruise the slick strip on A1A. Several miles offshore, in almost two thousand feet of water, these men rock to the rhythm of the Gulf Stream current.

The wind puffs around twenty knots, certainly nothing treacherous, but it’s coming straight out of the northeast, bucking that venerable Gulf Stream, bringing a bitter chop on top of ten foot rollers. The Lady Mary, all 50 sturdy, beamy feet of fiberglass, pitches dramatically over the waves. Nothing wants to stay where you put it – not even your feet. For the crew of this vessel, after a late start, it has already been a long day, and it’s about to stretch into tomorrow.

"It’s like a lake out here in the summertime," promises the captain, though little good that does anyone at the moment.

The back deck shines underneath the halogens, like an empty dance floor waiting for action. The men rub their eyes and faces, trying to forget their exhaustion. Work beckons. Gold is buried in these depths. Golden crabs hide and scavenge the hard bottom out here, and to the weary crewmen, landing these live creatures seems as difficult and demanding as mining up actual nuggets. Unfortunately, they are worth only a tiny fraction of the value of the real stuff.

Crewmen Jamie "Big Daddy" Huffman, a hard-working local product, and William "Boyzito" Roche, a burly Key West native who considers Miami "up north", re-ice the crab they’ve already landed this day and set-up the grapple to try to raise some more. They gripe to each other about their circumstances the entire time. Of course, the stories they tell their friends once they get back in will be filled with hyperbole about their complete defiance of adversity. These guys epitomize self-contradiction. Huffman’s hobbies include slamming Heinekens and chain-smoking Marlboro Lights, but he refuses to drink Fruit Punch Gatorade because "Red 40 is bad for you." Roche visits the casino once-a-month and blows a few hundred bucks to remind himself "how stupid it is to go to the casino – keeps me straight." They nod with agreeable severity at the other’s improbable reasoning. Perhaps it helps to be a little twisted in this line of work. Perhaps if commercial deckhands made any sense, they wouldn’t be commercial deckhands.

Owner/operator Bill "Big Willy" Whipple, the transplanted New England legend, still going strong at age 74, appears totally focused as he finalizes the bearings for this particular drag. Buoys generally won’t stay afloat in the Gulf Stream, and even if they do, the shipping channels run right through the fishing grounds, and the behemoth freighters and cruise ships churn them into a terribly expensive mess.

"We’ve had five or six loops coming to the boat at once," remembers Whipple. "We didn’t know what was going on. Then the buoys pop-up a hundred yards away on the other side of the boat." He chuckles about it for perhaps the first time. "It took us all day to sort that one out."

This type of fiasco makes dragging is a necessary evil of the fishery. Trying to pick trawls of gear off the bottom is no treat in any conditions, and in a four- or five-knot current about 400 fathoms thick, it can become a downright nightmare. Trawls can drift unpredictably during their set, and the skipper has to drag across a wide swath either side of the plot line. The grapple can get hung down on a gnarly bit of sea floor, or, if the conditions are nasty enough, that 500-pound hunk of steel chain won’t even sink all the way to the bottom. And there are many who wish that was the worst that could happen.

Four years ago, on an otherwise innocent summer morning, this unfortunate dragging procedure claimed the young life of one of the most capable fishermen this industry has ever known. Richard "Boom Boom" Nielsen Jr., a massive man with the heart to match, pioneered the golden crab fishery in the early nineties with his father, Richard Sr., after the ban on fish-trapping erased their livelihood. By 2000, behind unparalleled perseverance, the Nielsen family had helped create a profitable, sustainable fishery. In November of that year, Boom Boom smiled as a National Fisherman cover-boy, the recipient of the coveted Highliner award. Thirty short months later, he suffered the gut-wrenching fate all fishermen quietly dread when an unforgiving loop of line wrapped his wrist. His immense strength was useless against the plummeting grapple. Richard devoted immeasurable time and effort to a way of life that he loved, a way of life that ultimately took more than any man should have to give. He is dearly missed and always remembered.

"I’m just astonished by what Richard accomplished out here," Whipple comments, no small compliment, considering Whipple started fishing lobster traps on the Grand Banks in the 1960’s. That kind of respect trickles through the industry.

"I knew about him down in Key West," says Roche. "We tried golden crabbing down there. No one could make it work, but we kept hearin’ about this guy up in Lauderdale killin’ ‘em every week," he explains with suitable reverence. "I get chills every time we come out here," Roche adds. "I didn’t even know the guy, but just thinking about it…" His voice trails off. Surely this night feels no different. Perhaps Roche ponders the time or two that he’s slipped out of death’s unpredictable path.

Captain Whipple flips the quick-release latch on the pelican hook and the grapple drops into the thick blackness. Twenty minutes later the skipper decides they’re "hooked up" and signals for the haul back. Roche and Huffman come alive. They coil the drag line into large barrels and board the three intermediate weights, 100 lbs. each, secured at 150-foot intervals. Finally the ground line breaks the surface, and the most intense few minutes of the fishing process begin.

"It can get a little hectic when that grapple gets to the top," offers Whipple.

"It’s the hardest part," explains Huffman, "because you have to be really fast, and also really careful."

Roche bluntly adds his commentary in deckhand-ese: "Yeah, it sucks."

Roche ties off the trawl while Huffman works a snap-hook into the grapple, taking care not to get crushed against the gunwale as the swinging steel monster crashes against the side of the boat. They grunt and groan, heave and heft in the ritualistic offering of backs and shoulders essential to prosperity in any fishery. The grapple comes aboard with the help of a block-and-tackle and gets stored beneath the rail. They quickly load the power block and haul to the south end of the gear. Hopefully there will only be a couple of traps to contend with before they reach the anchor weight and can start hauling the other way. With the west wind trying to blow the vessel over the gear to the east, and the Gulf Stream trying to slide the boat over the gear to the north, Big Willy struggles to keep the Lady Mary headed south and prevent the ground line winding into the propeller or dragging the trawl into a mangled mess. If shouts are ever raised aboard the Lady Mary, they fly during these few frantic minutes.

Once they negotiate the transition and start hauling to the north end, the crew breathes a little easier, though they must remain sharp and quick. As the traps lift through the water column the crabs heat up, snatched from their comfortably dark and cold habitat into the bright, baking Florida heat. Roche deftly swings the trap aboard and rapidly packs the crab on ice, tossing back the undersized and the females. Huffman examines the trap for trouble, completes any necessary repairs, re-packs the bait canister, and stacks the trap on the stern. At twenty-five or thirty pounds-per-trap, it takes a steady hustle to keep pace with the skipper’s hauling speed. At the height of the year the crew sees upwards of fifty pounds-per-trap.

Most of the crab get stuffed into large Igloo coolers which hold roughly one hundred pounds apiece. Once full, including ice, the coolers weigh-out between 150 and 160 pounds. Shuffling them around the deck as they fill up gets cumbersome, but it simplifies delivery back at the dock. Sitting amidships are two crude live-wells, insulated Dyno vats rigged with aeration and filtration pumps. The vats hold almost five hundred pounds each, though Whipple hopes to expand that capacity.

"They aren’t ideal, by any means," concedes the captain, noting that he must frequently monitor temperature and salinity, adding ice and salt as necessary. "But quality control is the issue. We need to improve the shelf life of the crab to break into markets beyond this local area. We’ll experiment with this, and hopefully get into RSW somewhere down the line."

With the purpose of improving efficiency and expanding marketability, Whipple switched from day-fishing to three-day trips and made several significant modifications to the Lady Mary since acquiring her in 2004. Besides the makeshift live-wells, Whipple has converted a forward ice hold into a huge rope locker, installed new sounding technology, and created additional deck space with a four-foot platform extending over the stern. "We went to 50 trap trawls, whereas Richard fished 35’s," explains Whipple. "Grappling is such a nuisance, you want to have as many traps on there as possible."

"That sounds good in theory," counters Huffman, slumped on the rail with the trawl now finished. Despite breathing heavily he sparks up a cigarette, then shakes his head and motions toward the back deck. "But it sure don’t make my job any easier." The 2x3x4 wire mesh traps are stacked five-high across the stern, and combine with coolers, vats, and totes to occupy almost every square inch of the back deck. Everything wiggles and leans as the Lady Mary steams south against the Stream, but it’s all packed in tightly enough that nothing is going to fall. If Huffman and Roche have done their jobs well, they can use the half-hour run to catch a nap. And they need it.

It’s after midnight now, so the crew of the Lady Mary has been working for eighteen grueling hours so far. By the time these fifty traps are back in the water, the time will approach 2 AM. The crew will rotate two-hour watches, floating around the Florida Straits, grabbing four hours of sleep apiece before it’s ‘all hands on deck’ to begin the next fishing day. But once they push through it, the Lady Mary will turn west and head for the beach, and if they land anything decent the next day, the paycheck will prove worth the effort.

"There’s nothing like the feeling of heading for home with a boat-load," pronounces Huffman. He expounds on the ‘thrill of the hunt’ philosophy. Roche, on the other hand, contemplates a life away from fishing, expressing his growing desire to sleep in his own bed every night, to gain a little stability. Whipple smiles as he listens to their exchange, absorbing the next generation’s musings on an industry to which he’s dedicated almost fifty years of concerted energy. They reach the waypoint and the deckhands quickly quiet as they squeeze out on deck to set the gear.

Whipple preps his plotter, then he takes a moment to survey his surroundings. The moon glow ripples along the open sea. A few scattered clouds, almost vapor, drift across the clean night sky and big, bright stars shine forever. Some kind of promise lingers on the dim horizon. There are certainly worse places a guy could be.

"There’s only one way to make it in this business," surmises Whipple, as he turns the Lady Mary to the north to start the set. "You just have to love it."