The Monterey Bay Seafood Aquarium Seafood Watch’s recent downgrade of Florida stone crab from “Best Choice” to “Avoid” rating is “totally unnecessary." Jerry Sansom, executive director of Organized Fishermen of Florida, told SeafoodSource.
Seafood Watch downgraded the crab from green or “Best Choice” to red, “Avoid,” because of concerns about overfishing, mortality of stone crabs released after their claw is removed, and interactions with bottlenose dolphins, FishChoice said Tuesday, 8 October on its website.
Global landings of Florida stone crab in 2017 dropped around 15 percent compared to 2016 and plunged 50 percent compared to 2012, Seafood Watch said. Plus, the species had record low landings of around 1.9 million pounds for the 2018/2019 season.
“The likely blame goes to a whole host of environmental factors, including a stubborn two-year red tide bloom along the southwest Florida coast; the Category 5 fall blitzkrieg by Hurricane Michael in the panhandle; and the hangover from Hurricane Irma’s 2017 raking of the Keys’ fertile bay bottom,” National Fisherman reported.
Similarly, Sansom says the drop in landings is not due to overfishing, but is likely due to warming temperatures.
“The Gulf has been a lot warmer than it normally is, so that has quite an impact on stone crabs,” he said. “The industry is concerned about the drop in harvest, so we are trying to figure out whether it is temperature-related.”
Battling against Seafood Watch’s downgrade, Sansom said the Florida stone crab fishery “is probably one of the best managed resources in the country."
"There are closed seasons, size limits, and we don’t harvest the whole crab," he said. "We harvest the legal size claws and put them back, so they can regenerate claws. We have a 20 to 30 percent regeneration rate - there is no other fishery where you get that.”
Sansom is hoping that the Seafood Watch downgrade doesn’t impact sales, which skyrocketed to a record USD 30 million (EUR 27 million) for the 2018/2019 season.
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