On Bolivar Peninsula’s bay side, just beyond Delino Comeaux’s small bait camp, all that’s left of the boat stalls across the canal are jagged shambles, crisscrossed like pairs of splintered chopsticks reaching into a murky green-and-brown roux. Hurricane Ike’s scars are lasting reminders of the choppy waters commercial fishermen face daily—useful templates for how to bounce back after you wake up one morning and your life has blown away. For fishermen and their families, a good harvesting season doesn’t mean the next will be as successful. A bad season isn’t a guarantee the following will improve.
Comeaux sells blue crabs and fishing bait for a living, a trade passed down from his father. He’s among Galveston County’s last commercial crabbers and considers himself lucky to be in this line of work, to put food on the table for his family. These days, as the COVID-19 pandemic grinds the nation’s economy to a halt, he also understands that he’s lucky to be able to put food on the table. When Texas officials first enacted the statewide stay-at-home order in late March, Comeaux’s blue crab wholesales to local restaurants dipped temporarily, but thanks in part to the apparent boredom among Texas’ coastal dwellers, his bait sales skyrocketed during quarantine.
When the going gets boring for Texans, it seems, we go fishing. “I did lose some [income], but not nearly as much as you would think. Crabs are like crawfish—people get together to eat them,” Comeaux tells the Observer, noting how a crab boil’s communal nature goes against recommended social distancing guidelines. Comeaux’s cousin from a few miles down the peninsula, who harvests oysters, had more trouble moving his product. “He ended up having to freeze [the oysters] because he sells to restaurants.”
