By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
The white lights of fishing boats shimmered under a purple dawn in an unbroken string along Oregon’s central coast Wednesday as Dungeness crab fisherman prepared to drop their first pots of the 2023-24 season.
Wednesday marked the day pots could be left to soak off the central and southern coast in preparation for delivering crab to the docks beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The opening of the Dungeness season was delayed two weeks from Depoe Bay south to the California border to allow crab to fatten with meat. The fishery from Depoe Bay to the Washington border is closed until at least Jan. 1 to ensure crab in those areas have enough meat.
On Wednesday, crabbers plying the waters from Cape Foulweather to the California border were met with flat seas and temperatures that soared into the 60s in places.
At the Port of Newport smaller boats made several trips to the dock to load waiting crab pots to make second and third runs to drop in preparation for Saturday. Dock workers on forklifts buzzed back and forth with pallets of pots made ready for the season.
The big question for crabbers each season is the price their catch will bring. Getting a good price from the start can make all the difference to a fisherman’s bottom line — according to ODFW 83 to 89 percent of all crab landed in recent seasons is during the first eight weeks of the season when not delayed by price negotiations.
The Dungeness crab harvest is the state’s most valuable seafood harvest, averaging $60 million a year – but reaching as high as $91.5 million in 2021-22 when the season opened Dec. 1 in time for fishermen to hit the Christmas and New Years’ markets.
The 2022-23 season was repeatedly delayed until Jan. 15 and then opened in stages.
There are currently 421 Oregon Dungeness crab permits, according to ODFW, with an average of 320 boats that bring crab to Oregon ports. Each boat has different pot limits in its arsenal — there are 90 boats with 200 pots each, 175 with 300 pots and 156 with 500 pots.
Price negotiations
Every year fishermen, processors and other buyers try to come together before the season to see if they can negotiate a price. It is often unsuccessful and results in a free-for-all between crabbers and buyers, particularly the large processors.
Last year the average price was $2.61 per pound at the dock in January and then dropped to $2.13 in February – a near historic low — before leveling out at a season average of $2.69, according to ODFW.
Price negotiations this year began Sunday and ended Monday afternoon in Newport without fishermen and big processors agreeing on a base price to start the season. The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which regulates food safety in the shellfish industry, mediated the talks for the first time since 2016.
“I was at both price negotiation meetings,” said Lilli Gustafson, manager for Living Pacific Seafood, a brokerage in Newport. “And the company I manage was the first processor to set a price” – at $3.10 a pound.
Gustafson said Seawater Seafood, Hallmark Fisheries and Fathoms followed with prices ranging from $3 to $3.10 but the big processors – Pacific Seafood and Bornstein Seafoods had not yet set a price.
“And as far as I know, that is strictly the live price,” she said, then added that one processor Living Pacific supplies is offering a cooked price of $2.50. “I just know that one out-of-town cooked processing facility is buying at that price.”
The market is broken into segments, Gustafson explained. There is live crab, cooked crab that is packaged and sold whole, and sections – which is legs and pieces that get sold to the market usually for picked crab meat.
“The whole negotiation was based off section price,” Gustafson said. “Sections are basically crab that can be picked at a later date to make money to sell to freezers, to load up on inventory. So, with that being the main focus, the fishermen felt like they were not getting the answers that they were seeking. And they decided to just go ahead and call the meeting quits and the processors agreed.”
Bringing in the catch
When Newport’s fleet begins arriving at the dock with their catch Saturday, they will have to either find a buyer offering the $3 to $3.10, or sell to a larger plant for an as yet undetermined price.
“If they can’t get in with a market on the live side, then they will obviously be forced to sell to the (large) processors,” Gustafson said.
Fishermen do not have the option to sell what they can to the live market and hold back what they cannot until a price is decided upon with the big processors.
“I wish it were like that, but honestly the first pick probably comes in in the millions of pounds,” Gustafson said. “So if these little guys — there’s Seawater Seafood here, there’s Living Pacific, Safe Coast is now on the commercial dock, and the processors who dabble in the live market, but I’m unsure what the total capacity is, but if they can’t buy it …”
Last year, Pacific Seafood set a quota of 400,000 pounds as its maximum to buy live crab and it was split between their boats, Gustafson said.
“If they intend to do that this year, I have no idea,” she said. “But I would assume it goes for the same thing this year. Not maybe at the same amount poundage-wise at the 400,000. But somewhere around that is a good guess.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com