By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
Oregon’s Dungeness crab fleet is winding down a banner year – one nearly for the record books in fact.
With little more than a month to go before the close of the season it is doubtful this season’s catch, just north of 31 million pounds, will break the record of 33.7 million pounds landed during the 2004-05 season. But it will certainly come in at a solid and respectable second.
The strong finish to the 2022-23 commercial Dungeness season comes after crabbers suffered a dismal start.
“It’s been the old literary term – ‘The best of times and the worst of times,’ ” said Tim Novotny, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “It started off as a train wreck of a year. It didn’t begin on time and everything that could go wrong went wrong. The fisherman got a terrible price, one of the worst they’ve seen in a generation or two. So things started off in a terrible fashion.”
While the Oregon Dungeness season can officially begin Dec. 1, state biologists sample crab weekly along the coast to monitor the amount of meat and to test for levels of domoic acid before crabbers are allowed to start. Poor results delayed the start this season until Jan. 15 on the central coast and Feb. 1 in the north.
Because the main processor on the West Coast, Pacific Seafood of Clackamas, had millions of pounds of crab from last year in its freezers, the beginning price to fishermen was just over $2.
But it wasn’t long before a silver lining in the form of an abundant catch offset some of the low price, which eventually rebounded to a season average of $2.67 a pound.
“Once it got going, the crab have been big and bountiful,” Novotny said. “They’ve been absolutely the best of the best that we’ve seen in several years and it hasn’t stopped.”
This is only the second time in history Oregon’s 320-boat fleet has topped 30 million pounds.
“So this has been just an unbelievable year, and that’s helped the guys out because they’ve been able to continue to fish longer into the season,” Novotny said. “The prices started to come up in the last couple of months so it’s defrayed some of the poor start. It hasn’t made up for it completely, but it’s helped a little bit.”
The “other silver lining” is that while crabbers didn’t get the price they wanted, the lower cost to consumers meant that “folks who had not been able to enjoy crab for a couple of years because it had become too expensive” in the marketplace were able to enjoy crab once again, Novotny said.
Newport No. 1 in landings
Newport and the central Oregon coast has been leading the way in the amount of crab caught for the past six or seven years, according to the commission and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which monitors the catch. Newport crabbers have landed 10.5 million pounds of this year’s catch, while Coos Bay/Charleston has netted 6 million and Astoria 5.5 million.
“It’s been a good season, high value despite the low price-start,” said Troy Buell, the Newport-based fisheries manager for ODFW.
The crab price paid at the dock jumped to between $4.50 and $5 a pound at the beginning of May and has been holding steady since, Buell said. It has been at $5 for the past two weeks.
While the final tonnage and value of this season’s catch won’t be tallied until the last of the boats stacks its gear – the current value of this season’s catch is more than $83 million.
A comparison with last year’s catch highlights the difference pricing makes when it comes to what fisherman put in their pockets.
“Last year everything went right, the season started on time and a great price was negotiated from the jump,” Novotny said. “The overall catch was about 17 million pounds, which is the 10-year average. But the price was set so high we ended up with a record value for the industry of about $91 million.”
While he cannot count it out, Buell is skeptical this year’s catch will break the record set in 2004-05.
“I doubt it because the catch gets lower in summer,” Buell said. “There’s some chance we could still get there, but (the catch) has been low lately.”
The factors that led to this year’s bumper crop of crabs can in part be attributed to ocean currents delivering larvae back to coastal waters where they have good habitat to develop into juveniles, Buell said. But what is driving adult populations is somewhat of a “mystery” and depends on predation, water conditions and available food.
Whatever the reason, Novotny is crossing fingers that it continues.
“Hopefully this is setting them up for a bright future,” he said. “But it’s been astounding for the amount of landings we’ve had this year. That’s for sure.”
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com