Stone crab season begins with uncertainty
Seafood markets and restaurants across South Florida anxiously awaited word of stone crab availability on Monday as the annual seven-month season began steeped in uncertainty. A double whammy of red tide and Hurricane Michael could impact early supplies and prices, and it’s anyone’s guess how this season’s harvest will stack up.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” says Brian Johnson, general manager of Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant in Miami Beach, which hopes to begin serving fresh claws on Tuesday.
“We haven’t had any red tide in the Keys, so that’s not going to be a
factor for us,” says Gary Graves, vice president of Keys Fisheries in Marathon, one of the main suppliers to Joe’s.
Pent-up demand usually leads to higher prices in the opening weeks of stone crab season, which runs Oct. 15-May 15. Last year’s opening prices at local markets were in the $18-to-$23 per pound range for mediums, and in the $25-to-$45 per pound range for large and jumbo claws.
“We’re still waiting for the dock prices to be set, but we’re hopeful our prices will be around the same as last year,” Johnson says. Joe’s opened last Friday using frozen claws from the spring and sold large claws for $59.95 a serving and mediums for $32.95.
At 3 p.m. Monday, Graves said his vessels were still out in the water pulling in traps: “Over the radio our guys are saying it’s not looking great. But until they get in here and we weigh [the haul], I don’t know what ‘not great’ means.”
Nearly all Florida’s annual stone-crab catch comes from the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Bay and the Florida Keys, with a few small crabbers working waters near Miami and Key Biscayne. Along the Gulf, where a red tide outbreak has been severe and persistent the past few months, the stone crab supply may suffer.
“I spoke to a couple of the smaller guys in Cortez [near Sarasota] this morning, and it wasn’t good,” says Jose Sanchez, seafood manager for Delaware Chicken Farm & Seafood Market in Hollywood. “One guy said he pulled up 400 traps and all he got was 4 pounds. Another boat said they pulled up 65 traps and only got two crabs.”
The display cases in the store were empty of stone crab claws at 3 p.m. Monday, as the market was already sold out of one small batch that arrived from local crabbers earlier in the day. Another batch of large-sized claws arrived later in the day, priced at $34.99 per pound.
“The small, local guys say they did OK, about a pound per trap,” Sanchez says. “But the guys on the Gulf are worried [about red tide]. They don’t know if the crabs just moved away or if they died.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says stone crabs are safe to eat, as the claw meat is not tainted by red tide. But state authorities and independent researchers are investigating red tide’s potential impact on the stone crab population.
Sanchez says many traps are set far offshore and deep enough to escape red tide’s reach. But it’s unclear if red tide has disrupted the crabs’ food supply.
As for Hurricane Michael, many crab fleets north of Tampa were impeded by the storm. Traps were allowed to be set starting Oct. 5, but the storm got in the way of some usual trapping operations. “It will set things back a couple of weeks,” Sanchez says. “A lot of the medium claws come from those areas, so the mediums might be in short supply.”
Catfish Deweys restaurant in Fort Lauderdale was still awaiting word from its stone crab supplier on Monday afternoon, and was hopeful it would start serving fresh claws on Tuesday.