Here is a quicky story about a time that a bunch of us went up to Ocean Cove and were preparing breakfast after an early morning dive. Some of the non-divers in our group were fishing off the rocks going for rock and ling cod. For some reason after getting our limit on abalone, we decided we wanted some crab omlettes for breakfast because there were so many rock crab cruising around, so we nabbed about 20 of the angry little crustaceans and brought them back to camp. The reason they are called rock crab is because the suckers are so damn hard to break. The meat isn’t as tasty as dungeness, but will do in a pinch.
At any rate, as anyone knows, when you cook crab or lobster, you are supposed to put them into the pot while the water is cold….that is part of where we went wrong. The other thing was that we really only had 1 pot that was large enough to hold around 5 or 6 crabs. So, without our knowledge someone started the water a boiling before they actually put the crab in the pot while we (the divers) went back to the cleaning station to clean our abalone and fish(rock and ling cod) We arrive about 15 mins later with the camp in chaos. One of the ladies (not naming names to protect the innocent, but you know who you are) had attempted to jam around 1/2 of the crabs into the boiling pot of water and what happened next is something I will never forget. You see, the crabs didn’t like being forced into a boiling pot of water, so they decided that they would leap out of the pot and get the heck out of there. So there were several crabs running for their lives all over the camp after jumping out of the pots. It was quite comical, but also kinda sad because the crabs had nowhere to run really. The ocean was several hundred yards away and down a very steep cliff. It took about 10 mins. to gather them back up to finish the job.
They were delicious…in fact, probably the best crab omlettes I ever had. So remember, always make sure to bring a proper size pot and don’t boil the water before you put your catch in. 
