Crab season starts with tasty, high quality samples Dungeness fishing brings tasty danger, cash to Noyo

Consumers will soon be able to buy and cook big, juicy Dungeness crabs caught off the coast of Fort Bragg. But the first to sample their flesh every year are government biologists. Commercial fishermen out of Fort Bragg were allowed to pull their pots up on Monday.

Crab fishing may be the most lucrative and remains the most dangerous commercial fishing in California in 2014. Fishermen are hoping this could be the biggest and best year, eclipsing even 2011-2012, when 32 million pounds of crab was harvested worth $96.5 million. But the high quality of the early crab meat may be a sign that the total harvest will be smaller- as a larger number of crabs wouldn’t be eating as well as the big bodies early in the season indicated, studies show. But the good quality early crabs could also be due to rising ocean temperatures.

In past years, the season start has been delayed weeks or even months. Why? Because when biologists sampled the crabs, they didn’t have enough flesh in those claws, legs and body. The flesh test allows regulators to know when crabs are sexually mature and ready to take. Taken too soon and the fishery could be damaged for future years.

The way the start of crab season is determined is likely to make crab lovers hungry. First, a fishing boat is selected to take biologists out fishing. Crabs are caught in six pots off Fort Bragg (and at other spots all over California, Oregon and Washington) from preset depths. All legal-sized male crabs are brought in for testing. Like a fancy restaurant, the crabs for testing are shelled and baked (not steamed) for 12 minutes.

Crab meat is then removed, brined and weighed. When the weighing is done, it is averaged among all those caught in the test area. If over 25 percent meat on the crabs, the season opens off Fort Bragg. If not, everybody waits. The percentage of meat gets lower as one goes north, as crabs get smaller in colder waters. “Crab quality is very good this year based on preseason testing up and down the West Coast,” said Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Pete Kalvass, from his office in Noyo Harbor.

Fort Bragg’s opening on Monday was great news for some small boats. But the offshore underwater coast isn’t really crab habitat. Crabs like sloping sandy bottoms, not rocky bottoms that drop quickly. They are found mostly between shore and 300 feet down, but move deeper as the season goes along, making them hard to extract for small boats with less powerful pot pulling devices.

Recreational fishing for crabs has also become a big thing out of Noyo Harbor. The sport season opened Nov. 1. Recreational fishers can take both sexes and up to 10 crabs per day or six if fishing from one of the party boats. Although crab fishing off Fort Bragg isn’t top notch compared to other areas, Fort Bragg is home to Kalvass, a man most consider among the top experts on the big red crab that made San Francisco Fisherman’s wharf famous.

While other fisheries suffered declines ranging from large to cataclysmic in the 20th century, the Dungeness crab fishery has remained remarkably stable over the past century, charts on the Fish and Wildlife website show. This has allowed Dungeness crab to be the most valuable fishery in California several times in the 21st century.

Those 100-year figures show when crab populations go up, they inevitably go down not to long after. The graph line stretched out over that time shows very predictable ups and downs. The exception is Central California, which went way down in the 1980s and 90s and then back up.

“We have been on a high cycle for the last five years or so when you look at the whole state, but that has been driven by record catches in central California, whereas Fort Bragg north has been closer to the long term average,” said Kalvass.

“Fort Bragg is not a great crab port and so most of our boats fish near other ports to the north and south. We don’t have great Dungeness crab habitat here,” he said.

Dungeness crabs live from the Aleution islands to Santa Barbara, in water with surface temperatures between 38 and 65 degrees. Warmer water temperatures in the Southern part of their range have resulted in fewer crabs there, but meatier crabs in northern parts of the range.

The stability of the crab populations has been attributed to management by size, sex (male only for commercial) and season. The seasons are set according to those flesh tests. If the crabs aren’t mature, crab season start waits, much to the chagrin in past years of geared up fishermen and processors. That’s also why the season starts in mid-November to the South and Dec. 1 off Fort Bragg. Crabs themselves are quite hardy and can be put back in the ocean without as much damage to them as to fish.

Crab fishing causes less environmental damage due to by-catch than does other kinds of fishing. This is due mostly to the fact few other critters want to go inside a crab trap, or if they do, can swim out. Occasionally a crab pot does come up with an octopus but those can also be released. Pollution from San Francisco Bay has been shown to reduce crab numbers in studies.

While most fisheries are managed through a multi-state federal agency, Dungeness crab fishing is exempted from this, with the states of California, Oregon and Washington managing the entire fishery off their coasts, including in federal waters (more than 3 miles from shore). This has created less regulations but also issues in past years with different opening times and big boats from Washington or Oregon alleged by local fishermen to have been delving into California waters.

There has been less study of Dungeness crab because it isn’t in the trouble fish populations have been. There have been some recent studies to remedy that situation, including one available from the California Ocean Protection Council that sites many studies and sources, the source of the following information:

Crab mating occurs from March to July in offshore locations. After female crabs have molted, a male deposits sperm inside a female, which contains sperm that is viable for up to several years. Female eggs are fertilized only when she lays them from September to November after which they are carried beneath an abdominal flap for 60 — 120 days. A single brood may contain from one to two million eggs, and a female may produce three to four broods during her lifetime. Larvae shed their outer skeleton (molt) through five free swimming planktonic stages. Juveniles typically molt 11 to 12 times before reaching sexual maturity in approximately 2 to 3 years. Most adults reach marketable size in about 4 years and have a maximum lifespan of 8 to 10 years.

Food sources for adults include clams, crustaceans and fish. Crab fishing is still ranked at the top or very near the top of dangerous occupations. The Coast Guard has a special program intended to improve safety for fishermen with inspections and other programs.