If catching Dungeness crab were a competitive sport, then this year it was California for the win. Fishermen from the Golden State scooped up a record-breaking 27.48 million pounds of
Dungeness during the 2010-2011 season, beating both Washington and Oregon for the first time in years. Those states landed above-average totals of 21.7 and 21.2 million pounds, respectively.
The other big numbers were in values. Increasing demand, spurred by a hot live market with growing overseas destinations, particularly China, pushed prices up. For instance, though Oregon’s landings had dropped by 2 million pounds from the previous season, the value of landings rose from USD 44.6 million to USD 49 million.
“Basically it boils down to price per pound, and in 2009-2010 in Oregon we averaged under USD 2 per pound (ex-vessel prices averaged USD 1.93 per pound). In this current season we averaged USD 2.30 a pound,” explains Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission in Coos Bay, Ore. “It was up significantly — over USD 0.35 in value per pound for the whole season — and that was brought on by strong demand.”
Nowhere were landings and values higher than in California, which enjoyed a record-breaking take of $57 million for its catch. The last time the state has even come close was in 2004-05 when it landed 25 million pounds, and the 26 million pounds it landed in the 1976-77 season. California’s harvest has averaged around 16 million pounds per season since it began recording Dungeness landings in 1915-16.
“While 27 million pounds was a lot, what was so unusual was that most of it, 19 million pounds, came out of the central California management area. There was nothing even close to that historically,” says Peter Kalvass, a senior marine biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game based in Fort Bragg. Previously, the highest take for the central area, which is also called the San Francisco fishery, was 9 million pounds during the 1956-57 season. By contrast, that area had a total catch of 3.4 million pounds during the 2009-10 season.
“A six-fold increase over one season is mind-boggling,” says Kalvass, who credits “a perfect storm of oceanographic conditions” for the high numbers in the San Francisco fishery.
Click here to read the full story, which ran in the November issue of SeaFood Business magazine >
