Fruit – Keeping ripe pears for canning later

Here is why it's stupid:

1. Sous-vide doesn't get hot enough to kill botulism spores. Low acid foods will be very dangerous.
2. Boiling is required for a strong seal on canning jars.
3. All pectin jellies I have seen require boiling to set.

High acid recipes often call for processing in a water bath for a mere 10 minutes to seal the lids. Recipes that don't call for the water bath universally call for the product to be refrigerated.

Perhaps high acid foods could be vacuum sealed instead of bottled and pasteurized. It seems feasible but this is not the sort of thing you should experiment with. The failure conditions are catastrophic.

I think it's a fine question. If I were in your position, I'd definitely go for option 2 - I think pre-cooked and re-steamed crab would end up a lot like oversteamed crab: mushy and gross.

As for keeping them alive, when I was a kid we used to go crabbing every weekend. Mom would just keep them in a cardboard box in the kitchen until we were ready to eat them for dinner (much to my dad's dismay).

According to Bluecrab.info:

Crabs can live for several days out of water as long as they are healthy and are kept cool, moist, and stress-free. The optimal temperature is about 50° F., anything colder will ultimately kill them.

If I remember correctly, mom would keep a damp towel on top of the box. But that may have been dad not wanting to look at them.