About 10 years ago I was vacationing in southern Florida and was eager for my first taste of stone crab, a local delicacy I’d heard of but didn’t know much about.

The first restaurant I visited had stone crab claws on the menu.”Aha,” I thought to myself, “if they’re only serving the claws, then they must not have fresh, live crabs. I’m not falling for that!” Feeling streetwise and sophisticated, I ordered the blackened grouper and figured I’d get fresh stone crab the next night.

Three nights and three restaurants later, I’d still seen no sign of stone crabs except for their claws. No longer feeling quite so sophisticated, I asked my waiter why only the claws were available. And that’s when I learned the unusual tale of the stone crab.

Here’s the short version: Back in the early 1960s, stone crabs were so plentiful in Florida that they wholesaled for 30 cents a dozen, but overharvesting soon brought the species to the brink of extinction. An eight-year moratorium allowed the crabs to bounce back, and an innovative policy has kept the population stable since then: Instead of taking the entire crab back to shore, commercial crabbers snap off one claw and toss the live crab back into the sea, where the claw regenerates. Once the boat docks, the harvested claws are immediately boiled or steamed, put on ice, and then shipped to restaurants and markets. This protocol has saved the fishery (or the crabbery, if you prefer).

But all this would be nothing but a novel back story if not for the fact that stone crab is delicious. The claw flesh is meatier and sweeter than the flesh from blue crabs, and is never rubbery like lobster can occasionally be. And with the spring stone crab season about to end – they can only be harvested from October 15 to May 15 – this is a great time to sample this delicacy before it disappears for the summer.

One of the few places in New York where you can do that is Shelly’s (41 W. 57th St., 212-245-2422), the Midtown seafood house that gets daily shipments from Joe’s Stone Crab, the Miami Beach landmark where people often line up for hours to get a table.

Happily, no such waiting is necessary at Shelly’s, where stone crabs are sold in four sizes – select, large, jumbo, and colossal – depending on availability. At any size, they’re beautiful: The claws are orange, but their pincers are tipped with black, which creates a martial, war paint-like effect (an apt analogy, since the crabs can create a whopping 19,000 pounds per square inch of pressure with their claws – enough to open an oyster).

“We haven’t had many jumbo or colossal this season,” a Shelly’s waiter told me one recent evening. “That’s how it goes some years.” But don’t let that dissuade you. The select ($38 a pound) and large ($45 a pound) are plenty sizable – much larger than blue crab claws, so the meat is easier to extract – and are just as tasty as the bigger grades. A pound of claws, an order of Shelly’s exemplary hash browns ($8.50), and a side of grilled vegetables ($8.50) makes a nice lunch for two; make it two pounds of claws, and you’ve got a very satisfying dinner. Call ahead to check on the availability of the claws; if they’re running low that day, ask them to reserve a pound or two for you.

Since stone crab claws are already cooked, they’re also unusually easy to serve at home – assuming you can find a fishmonger that carries them. A good bet is Citarella (2135 Broadway and 424 Sixth Ave., 212-874-0383), where I recently picked up two pounds of large claws for $25 a pound.

And I knew just who I wanted to eat them with: Brooklyn sculptor George Ferrandi, who’s from Baltimore, and her studio assistant, Emily MacDonald-Korth, who hails from Miami. With the eastern seaboard’s two crab capitals thus represented, we set out to create a comparative crab feast.

While Ms. Ferrandi whipped up a batch of Baltimore-style blue crabs, Ms. MacDonald-Korth showed me the proper way to prepare stone crab claws for serving. Instead of cracking them at the table with a wooden mallet or nutcracker, as is typically done with blue crabs, the preferred method is to crack them beforehand with a hammer – a real hardware-store hammer.

“You have to hit it just hard enough to crack the shell, but not so hard that the shell completely shatters,” she explained. I quickly got the hang of it, whacking each claw on its two knuckles and then on its main pincer area. The shells broke but maintained their shape, so the claws were still largely intact but the meat was now easily accessible. (There’s a good tutorial available at joesstonecrab.com/today/cracking.html. )

As we sat down and dug in, the differences between the two crabs quickly became apparent. The stone crab claws (which Ms. Mac-Donald-Korth said were every bit as good as the ones she was used to eating in Miami) were clearly sweeter than the blue crabs, and they were more substantial and less flaky, providing more to sink your teeth into.

But these claws, like all stone crab claws, had been cooked without seasoning, while Ms. Ferrandi’s blue crabs had the spicy, salty kick of Old Bay seasoning, mustard powder, and celery seed. We agreed that each rendition was excellent in its own way, and Ms. Ferrandi and Ms. MacDonald-Korth gained new appreciation and respect for each other’s hometown crustacea.

As for me, I love blue crabs, and will happily eat them all summer long, as I do every year. But with just a few days remaining in the stone crab season, I’m going back to Citarella for one more batch. And I plan to be among the first in line when the fall season opens in October.