BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake...

BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William Warner, illustrated by Consuelo Hanks (Little, Brown: $11.95.; 304 pp.). Warner received the Pulitzer Prize for this lyrical, evocative study of the blue crab and the people who trap and prepare it. Warner’s gracefully written prose conveys his enchantment with the vast estuary, “ . . . an intimate place where land and water intertwine in infinite varieties of mood and pattern.” He respectfully recounts the back-breaking labor the watermen endure to supply diners with this elusive delicacy. But Warner sounds an ominous note in the new afterword. Overfishing, pollution and the increasing population of the coastal regions have taken their toll on the crab population and the Bay itself: “You look hard at the water and sometimes it seems like it’s getting a little old and tired, a little messy. Simple as that if anyone cares to notice.”