A constrained king crab supply is likely to continue the historically high prices, according to experts speaking at a panel during the 2020 Global Seafood Market Conference, which took place in late January in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
The 2019 season showcased a downward trend for the Alaskan red king crab season, with a quota of just 3.8 million pounds – the lowest quota since 1982. That’s also a stark contrast from the quota just over a decade ago, when quotas for red king crab were sitting at 20 million pounds.
“We have limited resources coming out of Alaska,” Dan Obradovich of the Pacific Seafood Group said during the panel.
Coupled with the constrained resources from Alaska, Russia – by far the largest supplier of king crab to the United States – has had its supplies shifted due to controversial government-run auctions for crab quotas. Those auctions led to the Russian Fishery Company winning one-third of the quotas.
That Russian supply, Obradovich said, is increasingly being purchased by China, typically in a live format. With even a small increase in per-capita consumption, China could begin to take an increasingly large piece of the overall supply as the market develops and increases.
The constrained supply has also resulted in a constricted pricing on red king crab legs and claws, as smaller sizes of crab begin to approach the same level of pricing as larger ones when historically the spread was much larger. In addition to that, the supply of smaller sizes is decreasing, as supplies out of the Pacific trend bigger.
“Historically there was a large spread between your largest size king crab and your smallest size,” Obradovich said.
The increase in price and constrained supply of the smaller sizes also leaves some restaurants with a dilemma. Typically many restaurants will pair smaller sizes, such as 14-17s and 16-20s, with another protein. That size crab fits well on a plate, where a larger size typically won’t.
“The [16-20] was the perfect size, you could put one leg on with a filet mignon,” Obradovich said. “Restaurants are going to have to figure out if they really want to do that, or if they want to find a different way to present the crab on the plate because the majority of what’s available, that you can build your menu around, is going to be larger.”
Photo courtesy of Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock
