By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
Oregon’s commercial Dungeness crab catch is down so far this season but the price fishermen are getting for their catch is buoying the fleet’s spreadsheets.
“The volume is down but the price has been really good so the actual money to the boats is still up there,” said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s state fishery manager Troy Buell.
Last year at this time approximately 17½ million pounds had been landed for a price paid to fishermen of about $63 million.
“This year we’ve got just under 14 million pounds, but the total revenue to the boats is actually better at over $83 million,” Buell said.
The structure of this season’s opening was staggered to allow crab in Oregon’s northern waters to better fill out with meat. The opening was not exactly the same as last year’s staggered opening, but close enough to make a comparison.
The season, which can open as early as Dec. 1, was delayed until Dec. 16 from the California border to Cape Falcon near Manzanita. Cape Falcon north to the Washington border opened Jan. 7.
The Dungeness crab fishery is Oregon’s most valuable and 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.
Five dollars per pound was the average price paid to fishermen in the opening week of the current season, according to ODFW, which includes the price paid by large processors like Pacific Seafood and Bornstein Seafoods.
“And it came up pretty quickly,” Buell said. “In the most recent week it was averaging $7.50 a pound.”
For consumers, that equated to an average starting price in December of $8.99 a pound for whole cooked crab. This week, it was $17.95 a pound at the South Beach Fish Market and $10.50 a pound for live crab – while supply lasts – at Chelsea Rose Seafood on the Newport bayfront. McKay’s Market in Newport is out of whole Dungeness for the season.
Last year the fishery landed a total of 24.7 million pounds of Dungeness 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.
The average prices early in the season last year were $3.41 a pound in December; $3.85 in January and $3.55 in February. The season average was $3.73.
The commercial Dungeness catch typically drops off dramatically after the first couple months of the season and this year is no different.
“We are already hearing about quite a few of the bigger boats are starting to pack their gear out and move on to other things at this point in the season,” Buell said. “It’s slowed down enough that they’re not really chasing crab anymore. There’s still plenty of people that will stick it out and just keep scratching away. But it’s already hit that point where it’s become uneconomical for some of the bigger boats.”
Some fishermen will move onto groundfish until the shrimp season opens in April while others may move on to different fisheries in Alaska, he said.
While the crab catch was also down in Alaska and British Columbia prior to this year’s Oregon opening, Buell said it does not signal a worrying trend.
“They go through cycles pretty regularly,” he said. “So it’s not an unheard of low point. I’ve certainly seen seasons with this volume in the recent past. We’ve had kind of a string of pretty good ones, kind of higher than the 10-year average for the last three or four seasons. This season is down but it’s not alarming. It’s just kind of in the normal range of fluctuation.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
