Occasionally, the bright red, mesh cages contain just what they're looking for: fat, juicy blue crabs.

Other times they have just a little crab or two, maybe a jellyfish.

"It's all a gamble," said C.J. Canby, the captain of Miss Paula, who has been crabbing on his own boat for eight years.

Every year, watermen chase crabs around the Chesapeake, trying to keep up with where the crabs are going and what kind of bait they like. They battle the weather and poor water quality in the search of enough crabs to make a living.

But this summer, watermen are facing even more obstacles.

Like all of us, they're paying more for everything: fuel, bait, supplies, crew. But the sinking economy means their customers are paying high prices for everything, too. With crabs also expensive - large males are topping $200 a bushel - some customers are skittish about buying.

And all that is on top of a string of stories in newspapers and on TV this spring about the sinking population and less-than-stellar reproduction of blue crabs, which is leading to limits on catching females this fall. Some in the seafood industry fear all the publicity turned people off of crabs altogether.

Add it all up, and being in the crab business can be dicey these days.

"It's a mixed bag," said Larry Simns, longtime president of the Maryland Watermen's Association.

'Everything's high'

The day starts early for Mr. Canby and his three crew members: his wife, Leanna, Charles Pannuty and Tyler Mentzer.

Mr. Canby lives in Pasadena's Riviera Beach neighborhood, but these days, he's betting that the crabs are further south.

He's licensed for 900 crab pots and has about 625 in the water, most south of the Bay Bridge, just outside the mouth of the Severn River.

It takes about an hour to get to Annapolis, and once there, work can begin half an hour before sunrise and stretch for eight hours after that.

Crab pots are cube-shaped boxes made of galvanized steel. There's a slot for bait - menhaden or razor clams - and entrances for crabs to scurry in. Once inside, the crabs realize they're trapped and follow their instinct to go up, where they are trapped in a chamber within the pot. A small circular hole allows the littlest crabs to escape, but the rest are stuck there and destined for a dinner plate.

Mr. Canby strings his pots together on a line, with 25 pots to a line. The ends are marked with flags attached to buoys.

The flags are pretty easy to spot, but sometimes his lines of crab pots still get run over and cut by careless boaters. Other times, other watermen accidentally cross their lines over his.

To check the pots, Mr. Canby motors the Miss Paula to one end of the line. The boat bobs in the water as a cool breeze blows by on a hot summer day. The State House rises in the distance off one side of the boat. In the other direction, the Bay Bridge stretches toward Kent Island.

Mr. Canby detaches the buoy and flag and runs the line through a motorized pulley, which helps lift the pots from the water.

He hands the pot to Mr. Mentzer, who with a few quick shakes, empties the bait pocket and sends crabs tumbling onto a culling table.

Mr. Mentzer quickly tosses in new bait and closes up the openings and hands the pot to Mr. Pannuty, who stacks them on the deck of the Miss Paula.

Mr. Pannuty and Mrs. Canby are responsible for culling, or sorting, the crabs. They go into different bushel baskets based on their size, gender and quality.

Large, fat males command the best price, but Mr. Canby said there's a market for every kind of crab. He sells most to a seafood retailer and sells a few himself, mostly the lesser quality crabs that don't fetch a great price.

He's finding interest in female crabs and smaller crabs - perhaps because people are cutting corners a bit when it comes to buying crabs.

"People are looking for a deal this year," he said. "Everything's high."

Once the string of crab pots is emptied and rebaited, they get tossed back overboard.

The work is messy - the crew members wear water-resistant coveralls to keep off the water and slime that comes sliding off the pots. Heavy gloves protect against nicks from the crab pots or getting pinched by the crabs.

But there's nothing to protect against the unique, pungent smell of saltwater combined with dead baitfish and fresh crabs.

The entire operation of checking and resetting one string of pots takes about 15 minutes. Then the crew moves onto the next string of pots. They aim to check 100 pots an hour.

"The faster you can pick up and set, the more pots you can check," Mr. Canby said. "Usually we try to go as fast as we can."

Love for the water

The four-person crew works like a well-oiled machine. Besides Mrs. Canby, who is an elementary school teacher, none of them can imagine anything else besides working on the water.

Mr. Canby said he worked for the state Department of Natural Resources checking water quality for three years before switching to being a waterman.

"I'd ride around on my DNR boat and see the watermen, and I'd want to be on their boat," he said.

Now he spends his summers crabbing and his winters as a waterfowl hunting guide.

Mr. Pannuty grew up with Mr. Canby. "We were always fishing, always doing something on the water," he said.

Mr. Mentzer had a similar story: "I like being on the water. I was always one of those kids on the water."

But being on the water isn't easy these days.

Mr. Simns from the watermen's association said that often, crabbers must catch several bushels just to cover their expenses.

"You've gotta put out a lot of money before you put anything in your pocket," he said.

"It's extremely hard work and there's nobody out here who doesn't want to be here," Mr. Canby said. "It's not going to be a gold rush."

Mr. Canby said he spends $110 a day fuel and up to $80 in bait. There's also the expense for replacing lost or damaged crab pots, which cost about $35 to make, up from $20 or $25 a few years ago.

He also has to pay his crew, although Leanna does work for free.

"Most days I've been able to make money," he said.

That's not true for all crabbers, though.

Depleted population

Depending on the type of crabbing and the location, the catches have varied.

"What we're hearing is very patchy success," said Bill Goldsborough, a scientist with the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "In some places, the crabs that there are, are fairly concentrated and the catches are good. But in some other areas, they're very scarce and catches are bad."

Mr. Goldsborough said the patchiness is normal, but "things get even more patchy the more depleted the population is."

And the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population is indeed depleted.

The population dropped significantly in the 1990s and has slipped further in recent years.

According the most recent Maryland-Virginia survey, there are 280 million crabs in the bay, and 120 million of them are adult crabs capable of spawning.

Scientists have set a goal of having 200 million adult crabs in the bay, in order to have steady reproduction from year to year.

And even though catches are low, watermen still are taking too great a percentage of the overall population.

According to scientists, no more than 56 percent of the crabs - and ideally, no more than 43 percent - should be harvested in a given year.

In 2007, even though the crab harvest was one of the worst on record, 60 percent of the crabs were taken.

All of those numbers and percentages indicate that if we follow the current course, a large harvest of crabs will no longer be sustainable, scientists say.

That's why Maryland and Virginia put into place restrictions targeted at reducing the female crab harvest by a third.

Recreational crabbers in Maryland can no longer keep female crabs. And commercial crabbers will face an early end to the season for females this year, and they'll have bushel limits on females in the fall.

Though few people eat steamed female crabs, females are the dominant type of crab in picked crab meat sold at grocery stores and seafood retailers.

The regulations were tough to swallow for watermen, especially those on the lower Eastern Shore who rely on the fall run of female crabs to spawn in the southern bay.

Watermen and environmental advocates have been lobbying for a longer-term strategy for managing blue crabs and minimizing the problems that harm them, especially pollution and a loss of underwater grasses.

"We need to be talking about beyond this year," said Mr. Goldsborough of the bay foundation. "The long term is what's really critical here."

Having faith

Despite the problems facing crabs and crabbers, people in the industry say Marylanders can eat blue crabs with a clear conscience.

Though many argue crabs haven't been managed perfectly, crabbing still is legal. And fishery managers are taking steps to try to bring crabs back to abundance.

"Your personal boycott is not going to help," said Noreen Eberly of the state's seafood marketing office. "The crabs are available and they are legal. If they weren't able to harvest them, they wouldn't be there. I really hope people will go out and enjoy crabs. They're a delicious part of Maryland living, so we should enjoy them."

As hard as it may be, Marylanders should trust that officials are doing the right thing by crabs, said Mr. Goldsborough of the bay foundation.

"You have to have faith in your management system. You have to make it work," he said.

And besides, he said not eating crabs won't really help the crabs that much.

"It will do little except hurt the crabber," he said.