Is it safe to eat dead blue crab if it was refrigerated before it died?

Answer 1

It depends how long it was refrigerated for. Crab is a meat that deteriorates very quickly after death, and should be eaten promptly, preferably the same day. The fact that the crab died in the fridge doesn't, in itself, make it bad to eat: if you were refrigerated naked, you'd die too in due course, so it was probably the refrigeration, combined with the stress the animal was placed under being caught, stored, transported, stored, transported again and stored again, that killed it.

You might want to think about the feelings of the crabs and try to eat them very soon after you buy them. Imagine how you'd feel being taken away from the only place you'd ever known, and the only place you can thrive, having your limbs tied together with rubber bands so you can't move them or fight back, being stacked up like wood with a whole lot of other crabs, most of whom you'd never met, and taken to places where they sit you on ice until they stick you in a plastic bag and shove you in a very cold fridge. And all this a very long way from the beautiful fresh ocean that you love so much ...