BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS by WILLIAM W. WARNER
304 pages. Atlantic-Little Brown.
$10.00.
Deep fried or steamed, the Atlantic blue crab is a gourmet's delight. William Warner's book about Callinectes sapidus (the creature's first name is Greek for beautiful swimmer, its last, Latin for tasty) is a reader's treat. Warner, a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, has spent years studying the blue crab and his human harvesters in their natural habitat, Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. The result of his study is a piece of popular oceanography worthy of shelf space alongside Rachel Carson's classic Edge of the Sea and Henry Beston's Outermost House.
Warner, naturally enough, spends much...