By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
NEWPORT – Fishermen with callused hands and vise-like grips worked steadily along Newport’s docks this week to prepare boats and gear in a final push before the opening of Oregon’s 2024-25 commercial Dungeness crab season.
It is all-hands-on-deck as crews finish engine repairs, prepare bait jars and make ready the last of the crab pots – mending gaps in wire mesh, coiling lines and arranging buoys that will mark the pots position on the ocean floor.
The hope along the docks is for a Dec. 16 opener after tests this week by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Agriculture showed that crab along the Oregon coast are free of biotoxins and have enough meat for market.
The season, which can open as early as Dec. 1, was delayed for at least two weeks this month after initial tests showed crab did not reach meat criteria in four test areas and had higher than allowed domoic acid in crab’s guts in two of the 12 test areas.
On Friday, ODFW announced the crab fishery will open at 9 a.m. Dec. 16 from the
California border to Cape Falcon near Manzanita. No decision has been made
about when the north coast will open.
The Dungeness crab season — Oregon’s most valuable fishery — rarely opens Dec. 1. For the 2023-24 season, the fishery opened Dec. 16 for the central and southern Oregon coasts. During 2022-23 it opened in stages Jan. 15 and Feb. 1. The last time commercial ocean crabbing opened Dec. 1 was for the 2021-22 season.
The Oregon Dungeness crab advisory committee met Thursday afternoon to discuss three options for the season’s start:
- Opening the season Dec. 16 along the entire 400 miles of the Oregon coast;
- Delay the season further until all of Washington and California are ready to open; or
- Open the fishery from the California border to a line somewhere south of the Columbia River.
Prior to the meeting Kelly Corbett, ODFW’s Newport-based commercial crab project manager, explained why a line was being considered.
“Long Beach (Wash.) did not make criteria,” Corbett told YachatsNews. “And so we could be considering a line up on the north coast for meat recovery so that our northern coast and the southern Washington area could open at the same time. That has not been decided.”
The unanimous feedback from fishermen during Thursday’s meeting was to open from the California border to Cape Falcon on Dec. 16, and delay opening farther north to Washington until the crab have more time to fill out near the Columbia River and Long Beach.
ODFW officials took that recommendation to the Tri-State Dungeness Crab Committee on Friday morning. The committee, which includes representatives from state agencies and industry participants in Oregon, Washington and California, is responsible for making the decision.
On Friday afternoon, ODFW announced the committee agreed with the recommendation. Crab fishermen can set gear for a 73-hour presoak beginning at 8 a.m. Friday, Dec. 13, and begin pulling pots at 9 a.m. Dec. 16.
Last season by the numbers
The 2023-24 season was characterized as “excellent” in ODFW’s November Dungeness crab fishery newsletter.
The fishery landed a total of 24.7 million pounds of crab into Oregon ports, well over the 10-year average of 18 million pounds, ODFW said. The landings equated to $93.6 million paid to fisherman, the second highest grossing season on record by just under $1 million when adjusted for inflation.
“That average price per pound peaked at $6.40 in May 2024 and came in at $3.79 across the entire season just slightly above the past 10 season averages,” according to the newsletter. “In total, 321 different permit holders landed crab on 5,783 separate fish tickets into Oregon ports from the ocean and Columbia River.”
The ports of Newport and Depoe Bay led the way with 37 percent of Oregon’s catch; followed by Astoria with 30 percent; Charleston with 14 percent; Garibaldi/Nehalem/Pacific City with eight percent; Gold Beach/Brookings with five percent; Florence/Winchester Bay with four percent; and Bandon/Port Orford with three percent.
Busy dockside
Drew Beaty of Salem and “Gravy” Dave Lane of Newport have been busy working on gear amidst the tens of thousands of neatly stacked crab pots dockside in Newport. The men will be working this season aboard the 32-foot F/V Pursuit, which they say is the smallest crab boat in Newport’s fleet.
“We’ve been just kind of slowly picking away since the season is opening late,” said Lane, who will be the deck boss this year. “We’ve done about a month working on gear and we are about done.”
The pair took a break to explain a fact not known by the general public — the need to attach zinc to the crab pots.
“When the salt comes in contact with the metal it puts off an electrical current,” Beaty said. “And it scares the crabs away. It makes for a hot pot. That’s why they put zinc on boats and stuff because it will start eating pinholes through the boat, the electrolysis will.”
“And it will eat your pot too,” Lane added.
The men have high hopes for the catch and prices this season.
“They say we are going to start at the highest ever because supposedly Alaska didn’t meet their quota,” Lane said. “So we might be at $5.60 or something to start.”
With the Pursuit’s newly expanded tank, which holds 3,000 pounds of crab, Lane hopes that the boats 200 pots might bring in 100,000 pounds by the end of the season.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” he said.
In order to get their pots on the fishing grounds as quickly as possible, the Pursuit will team up with F/V Das Bug captain Perry Bordeaux, who purchased the 91-foot F/V Defiant last year to use in part as a crab pot “dump boat.” The vessel can carry 900 pots at a time.
The price paid for crab last year compensated beyond supply and demand of fewer caught than the year previous in part because of a split-opener, Bordeaux said, which alleviated any glut on the market that can result from a statewide opening. There is also no leftover crab sitting in processors’ freezers this year – which brings down the opening price.
“And then late season there was really good demand in the live market and it stayed good all the way through August,” he said. “We partly owe that to southeast Alaska and Prince Rupert, B.C., which were all pretty low fisheries last year. That allowed us to really have the corner on the market, the same way Puget Sound has been benefitting this fall. They’ve been fishing for like $10, $11 (a pound) up there.”
Bordeaux would have liked to have had a Dec. 1 opener this year in the 140-mile stretch from Bandon to Cascade Head where meat criteria and biotoxin were not an issue and the weather was favorable for smaller boats.
“It was all beautiful,” he said. “We had 28.3 percent crab (meat) up here which is unheard of. That’s like holy shit, let’s get this crab off to market. But even if we have a worse-case scenario and they hold us off until January, we’re still going to get a decent price. But the sooner we go the better that price is going to be.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
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