"For Filipinos, our connection with crabs is baked right into the culture," writes Rocky Rivera, who grew up crabbing on Treasure Island. "According to old folk tales, Tambanokano was a gigantic crab who was a child of the Sun and Moon. He lived in a hole in the bottom of the ocean and controlled the tides with his movement. He was so powerful that every time he opened and closed his eyes, a bolt of lightning would flash." 🦀 "I never learned how to fish when I was growing up in San Francisco, but I did learn how to go crabbing," says Rivera. "We lived on Treasure Island — or T.I., as the locals call it — back when the man-made island was still an active naval base. All through my childhood, I was surrounded by the damp, salty smell of waves crashing upon an artificial seawall — the cawing of gulls, faint tapping of metal hooks on flagpoles and ever-present foghorn in the distance. On winter nights, when the weather permitted, my friends and I would bundle up and walk out onto the wooden pier with a crab net, a package of defrosted chicken thighs ready to be strapped into the bait cage. As a kid, it was staying up late that made it exciting — the fattest Dungeness mostly fed at night. As a teenager, it was the camaraderie of wind-whipped faces and timing our beers to when we pulled up the net to examine our haul. I learned how to pick a stray crab up off a net — from behind — before it could scuttle away on the pier, then flip it over to see if we were lucky enough to get some roe out of the catch. When our eyes started drooping and our stomachs started growling, we’d head back to the house for a feast." As the Bay Area's commercial Dungeness crab season (finally) opens in the Bay, Filipina American writer, artist, and MC @rockyrivera reflects on the disappearance of a beloved pastime. Read her essay, the latest in her new series Frisco Foodies, at the link in our bio. 🔗 📸: @bethlaberge, KQED