Crab fishing season ‘devastated’ by virus
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The Dungeness crab fishing industry in Humboldt Bay took a hit as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.
“We could use one word: it’s devastating,” Harrison Ibach, president of the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association, told the Times-Standard in late March, not long after a shelter-in-place was declared in the state. “Everything has come to a screaming halt. And it’s not just the crab industry, it’s the entire seafood industry.”
Ibach and others estimated that the best market price for a pound of crab in Humboldt County — from the few buyers left — was around $2 per pound, down from $3 at the start of the 2019-2020 season.
The crabbing season typically slows down in March, but the global coronavirus pandemic brought unprecedented levels of decline to the industry, fishermen said. It started when China — a top shipping location for live crabs — stopped taking in product from Humboldt Bay fishermen after the virus began wreaking havoc in the country.
Crabbing seasons in recent years have ended in hardship, including a state settlement in 2019 that prematurely closed crab fisheries over a series of whale entanglements off the California coast, including one of them near Eureka.
Crab fishermen frustrated with years of economic blows have difficulty finding other sources of income, having sunk investments into boats and equipment, fisherman Jake McMaster said. In the fishing world, however, there’s room to adapt.
“Fishermen are good at adapting and rolling with the punches, especially for the guys who only crab,” McMaster said. “I never fish salmon — just crab and albacore, but now, the way the season’s going, we’re going to go salmon-fishing!”
Up in Trinidad, the conditions were not quite as bad, said Susan Rotwein, owner of Cap’n Zach’s Crab House in McKinleyville.
Cap’n Zach’s sells directly to customers and had been able to stay open amid social- distancing guidelines brought about by the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order. Those kinds of businesses are still buying all the crab that can be caught, Rotwein said.