crabber

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From crab (“crustacean having five pairs of legs”) +‎ -er (occupational suffix) or +‎ -er (relational noun suffix).

crabber (plural crabbers)

1. A person who catches crabs.
   • 1989, National Fisherman, volumes 70-71, page 26:

     Many shrimpers complain that the crabbers place their traps too close together and that they can't go between the traps without snagging their nets.

2. (nautical) A boat used for catching crabs.
   • 1972, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore:

     In the bright haze of morning they came into Hort Harbor, where a hundred craft were moored or setting forth: fishermen's boats, crabbers, trawlers, trading-ships, two galleys of twenty oars […]

   • 2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     It is standard practice for search and rescue authorities to ask other vessels in the area to assist. Usually, this is done. The weather on the night of 31 December was too atrocious, and when at 11pm the Coast Guard asked the crabber Ruff & Reddy to head to the scene, its skipper refused, as a skipper has a right to do if he believes conditions to be too treacherous.

From crab (“to be ill-tempered; to complain or find fault”) +‎ -er.

crabber (plural crabbers)

1. A person who finds fault or criticizes.

   Synonyms: criticizer; see also Thesaurus:complainer

   • 1936, Josephine Tey, A Shilling for Candles, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, published 1998, →ISBN, page 103:

     There were one or two crabbers, of course—people who wanted his job—but no one paid any attention to the likes of them.