California opens more coastline to crab fishing, but don’t count on a big haul yet
Woe is the crab lover: More of California’s north coast opened to commercial crab fishing Tuesday, but stormy waters and a shellfish toxin still are limiting the haul and putting a further crimp on the season for the tasty crustaceans.
“It’s not easy to be a crab fisherman in California this year,” said Noah Oppenheim, director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “But they’ll soldier on.”
Crab lovers had hoped for relief this season after several frustrating winters of onagain-off-again crab catching along the California coast. The crab fishery was valued at $67.5 million last season.
Crab fishers began hauling up the tasty crustaceans along the Central Coast south of Mendocino County when the commercial season began in mid-November.
But state authorities kept the fishery north of Sonoma County off limits until Tuesday — the latest date allowed by law — because crabs there were coming in lean and considered not ready for market.
Historically, the waters north of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line have been a bit more productive, with crabbers hauling up an average of 9.6 million pounds a year from that region over the last decade compared to nearly 9 million pounds a year off the shores south of there.
So while crabbers have been fishing the open waters to the south — including off San Francisco, Half Moon Bay and Monterey Bay — restrictions on the northern waters depressed the supply, spiking prices and leaving some retailers’ seafood shelves devoid of Dungeness.
Opening more of the North Coast waters to crab fishing should help. But now there are nasty storms bearing down on the coast.
“It’s simply unsafe to go out with a storm offshore,” Oppenheim said as an “atmospheric river” of rainstorms headed for shore.
And the waters from Patrick Point in Humboldt County north to the Oregon Border remain off limits to crab fishing because they are showing high levels of domoic acid, an algal bloom byproduct that accumulates in shellfish, sardines and anchovies and can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning.
"The Department of Public Health issued an advisory that the crab was coming in hot” for domoic acid, said Department of Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Jordan Traverso, adding that the toxin has been a persistent problem in recent years due to warmer ocean water.
“Algal blooms happen anyway, but typically colder ocean water flushes in and kills the algal blooms,” Traverso said. “When the algal bloom dies the crab metabolizes the acid out of its body. Usually that all happens before the season starts in November. But these last few years the ocean waters have stayed warmer longer. That’s why seasons have been delayed.”
Authorities test the crab weekly to determine whether the domoic acid levels have subsided enough for them to be safe, Traverso said. They must have safe levels for two weeks to open the waters to fishing, she said.
“I wish I could put a finger on when, there’s just no way to know,” Traverso said. “We’ll just keep monitoring.”
Juan Madero, buyer for Cook’s Seafood in Menlo Park, said many of the bigger fishing boats are already calling it a season. Dungeness has been selling there for $13.99 a pound, almost twice the price from years past, he said.
Other retailers this season have listed crab as much as $15.99 a pound.
“A lot of people over here are pulling traps out, they’re not going to go out any more,” Madero said. “Supplies have been very tight. There’s not that much this year, a lot of small crabs. The quality is excellent. The ones we’ve been getting have been excellent, nice and full and sweet. But there aren’t that many."