The season for snow crab, the taste of winter along the Sea of Japan, opened 6 November. Males will be caught until 20 March. The season for females closes at year-end.
Fishermen dropped dragnets off the coast at midnight and two hours later began hauling up live crabs, sizing them to a minimum of 20 cm across the carapace, and banding the claws. Dragnets work well here instead of pots, as the crabs inhabit the muddy ocean floor at a depth of 40 to 200 meters.
Most of the product is sold whole. Kani-miso, the green and slightly bitter guts, is heated with sake in the emptied carapace over a low flame and used as a dipping sauce. Besides being shipped around the country, the crabs form the basis of a gourmet tourism industry in which visitors stay at traditional inns, enjoy hot-spring baths and eat crab.
Snow crab landed in Fukui Prefecture are famous nationwide, and are branded as “Echizen-gani” after a historical name for the prefecture. Further south, in Tottori Prefecture, the crabs are branded as “Matsuba-gani.” High prices of the first day are usually inflated for PR purposes. The top price of the day was JPY 39,000 (USD 339.51; EUR 273.37) for a large Echizen male, but the best price for a female was a more reasonable JPY 3,500 (USD 30.48; EUR 24.53).
Fisheries researchers in Hyogo Prefecture, at the southern end of the crabbing area, said that resource surveys indicated catches would be at or slightly below that of last year. Sea of Japan snow crab accounts for about 40 percent of all domestic crab landings. Hokkaido, which also catches king and hair crab, accounts for 20 percent by weight. However, the bulk of frozen crab leg clusters, both snow and king, is sourced from Russia.
This year, the suddenly weak yen, currently at 115 JPY per US dollar, following a surprise currency intervention by the Bank of Japan, will make it harder for Japan to compete with American buyers for snow crab. Additionally, strong shrimp prices have been supporting demand for snow crab as a substitute in the United States. Accordingly, more Russian crab of all kinds is expected to go to the U.S. market, or to China for picking and re-export to the United States, and less to Japan.
Russia’s catch quotas on king and snow crab were raised 45 and 11 percent, respectively, this year, but this may be offset by a reduction in IUU deliveries to Japan. Russia has been more vigorous recently in its anti-poaching patrols and vessel tracking efforts to deter IUU fishing, with the result that some poaching vessels have moved into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Hokkaido Fisheries Adjustment Office of the Fisheries Agency said that it has collected 291 illegally set crab pots and 2,483 kilograms (kg) of snow crab on the Kitami Yamato bank in Japan’s EEZ off the port of Monbetsu in northeastern Hokkaido. The number of baskets and crabs had quintupled from the previous year.
Japan has been dragging its feet on implementing a certificate of origin requirement for king crab from Russia. It had previously been planned during the last fiscal year, but local interests have pushed for delays, fearing an economic slowdown from the loss of processing work. It now looks like this year’s supply for the New Year — Japan’s biggest consumption period — will enter before the requirement is actually implemented. The year end is the new target. Nonetheless, imports of live snow crab were off sharply in the summer while processed imports were moderately up, indicating fewer IUU deliveries, though this may have more to do with stricter Russian monitoring efforts than with the upcoming paperwork requirements.
At Monbetsu, where much Russian product enters, imports of Russian snow crab in August were at 93.3 percent of the total from the same month last year, but prices were up 22 percent. Imports of kings for the year through the end of August amounted to 135.3 metric tons, up a little over 35 percent, while the value was 164.81 million yen, working out to about 1,218 yen (USD 10.61, EUR 8.54) per kg. The figures are for whole crab.
For home use in New Year hotpot dishes, mail-ordered leg clusters of Russian origin are often ordered. Japan has nationwide refrigerated and frozen parcel delivery available. Advertised prices for kings are at 4,650-5,250 yen (USD 40.53-45.77, EUR 32.61-36.82) per kg, and snow is 1,986-2,980 yen (USD 17.31-25.98, EUR 13.93-20.90) per kg.
