Crabbing season picks up

Demand for the succulent delicacy is high, and buyers are trucking them out to stores and restaurants as soon as they are hoisted from boats filled to the brim. All of the harvest thus far is going for the live and whole cooked markets in the Bay Area. It’s expected that people will want the five-legged crustacean through Christmas and the New Year.

But since the DFG announcement, the northern markets for live and whole cooked crab may soon open up, bringing a windfall for buyers. Fishermen will continue to receive $1.75 per pound unless they renegotiate the price. Besides forecasts calling for many days of fine weather through next week, the good news for local fishermen came late Friday.

Crab quality tests conducted on Dec. 7, 2005 indicate the crabs will not be ready for harvest on Dec. 16, 2005, Director L. Ryan Broddrick wrote in an e-mail.

In the interest of cooperatively managing the interstate Dungeness crab fishery, Broddrick delayed the opening of Dungeness crab season in Northern California Districts 6, 7, 8 and 9 until 12:01 a.m. Dec. 31.

For now, District 10 — the central fishery of Half Moon Bay, San Francisco and Bodega Bay — is the only source of Dungeness crabs on the entire West Coast. According to DFG, Oregon and Washington have also delayed their season openings. Suddenly, locally caught crabs are thrust into the estimable position of being the only game in town, but historically, harvests in the central fishery are dwarfed by what is caught in the north and unlikely to meet demand. Then too, this year’s harvest is less abundant. Just two weeks into the season, the fishermen are loading more rope onto their boats in preparation to move the crab pots to deeper waters.

Last year, the central fishery landed 5.5 million pounds of Dungeness crabs for the entire season. The bulk of the harvest — 3.7 million pounds — was caught derby-style within the first two weeks of the season before the big boats moved on to fish in the northern fishery opener on Dec. 1. Compared with California’s total harvest for the entire season of 23.7 million pounds, the northern fishery of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties is the mother lode of Dungeness crabs. A smaller southern fishery of Morro Bay and Monterey trapped 200,000 pounds of crab last season.

The strike shut off supplies for the local delicacy at Thanksgiving, when demand is highest for the year. Retailers paid a premium for Dungeness crabs from Canada and tribal sources in Washington to meet demand, but the out-of-state supply whether live, whole cooked or fresh frozen was woefully short. Pacific Seafoods Company in San Francisco, the West Coast seafood industry hegemony, refused to buy crabs at $1.75 per pound, the same price paid last year though fuel costs rose to $3 a gallon, and costs for insurance, bait and crab pots also increased.

"Between $1.65 and $1.75, what difference does 10 cents make?” said Duncan MacLean, president of the Half Moon Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Association. "That’s no reason to hold up an entire fleet and peddle the frozen stuff over the Thanksgiving holiday. The response from the public has been tremendous. They held off and weren’t buying the Canadian stuff.”

After Thanksgiving, the Oregon-based Pacific Seafood Group agreed to buy crabs at $1.75 and other processors in San Francisco followed suit, thus ensuring the same price for live crabs up and down the coast between San Mateo and Sonoma counties. Fishermen in Half Moon Bay and Bodega Bay had local buyers, but they stood in solidarity with San Francisco fishermen.

Pacific Seafoods Company General Manager Joe Cincotta said they queried the retailers after Thanksgiving and found they still wanted crabs, therefore, they settled with the fishermen. He said it was not true that the company had frozen crabs from the previous season to sell at Thanksgiving.

By then, the Department of Fish and Game had postponed the opening of the northern fishery to Dec. 15 because of the soft shell condition of the crabs around Crescent City. Many of the larger boats sailed north to await the northern opener without ever splashing their pots off the coast of Central California.

California’s fair start law requires those who fish in the central fishery to wait 30 days before they set their gear in the northern fishery if the Crescent City opener is officially postponed. Commercial fishermen who fished here will not be able to fish in the northern fishery until Jan. 30.

The department conducted tests on Dec. 7 in waters around Crescent City and found the ratio of cooked meat to the total weight of the crab was 22.6 percent. The target is 25 percent for the "picking” market, frozen crabs picked for the meat.

The last time the northern fishery was closed was 10 years ago, said DFG Marine Biologist Pete Kalvass. The local fishermen have the central fishery to themselves, though the catch is spotty. Favorite fishing grounds are yielding less, an average of 18 to 20 pounds or 10 to 15 crabs. In good years, the pots contain 50 to 60 pounds of crab. Also, fewer jumbos (crabs that weigh more than two-and-a-half pounds) turned up in the pots, Kalvass said.

"The catch is in cycles,” Kalvass said. "They had record years (1999 and 2000) for two years in a row, but six years ago they caught less than a million. What goes up; goes down. We don’t know when.”