By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
NEWPORT – Oregon’s commercial Dungeness crab season is off and running but has been slower out of the blocks this year after gale force winds on the ocean forced many boats to run for port before dumping all their pots.
“We’re not seeing a lot come in yet,” Living Pacific Seafood office manager Lilli Gustafson said Wednesday. “Some guys got out but obviously the wind was a big thing. People got blown in prematurely and weren’t able to run through some gear. But as you can tell with how busy it is right now, there’s a lot of guys going out to set gear and also run some of their gear that went out on dump boats.”
With a forecast of favorable fishing weather for the next few days Newport’s docks bustled as crews loaded extra gear and bait onto boats.
“We’ll see if that forecast holds up because Oregon winters are unpredictable,” Gustafson said.
The season was delayed two weeks this year from a possible Dec. 1 opening to a partial opening Monday from the California border north to Manzanita. The delay followed by a partial opening along the Oregon coast has become commonplace as fishermen and state fish and wildlife managers discuss what is best overall for the fishery.
On Monday, the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife announced that the Dungeness crab fishery woud be delayed until at least Jan. 15 from Cape Falcon near Manzanita to the Washington border. The agency said a third round of preseason testing in Long Beach, Wash. showed the level of meat in crab remains lower than required for commercial harvest. “This year it was decided to leave the north coast closed a bit longer to let those crab fill out with meat and to coincide with a southwest Washington opener,” ODFW said in a news release.
The dip in volume of crab caught in Alaska and British Columbia this fall has meant a good starting price for Oregon crabbers this year.
Living Pacific, one of several live crab buyers in Newport, started the season paying fishermen $4.75 a pound. At this time last year, it was paying higher than most at $3.10 a pound.
Living Pacific had a first boat unload Monday night, but because of the winds were just seeing a fifth boat with a partial load arrive Wednesday afternoon.
“The crab look amazing,” Gustafson said. “Our buyer was very pleased with the crab that he saw. I’ve had no complaints so far. But it is too early to tell what kind of volume is out there just because of that weather.”
By Friday or Saturday, so long as the weather holds, the fleet will have a clearer picture of the volume, she said.
Newport biggest port
The ODFW said Monday that despite rough ocean conditions, more than 2.5 million pounds of crab were brought into Oregon ports since the opener. Price at the docks averaged $4.50 per pound, ODFW said, well above last season’s total season average of $3.79 per pound.
According to talk on the docks, Newport is the biggest commercial port in the state because much of the good crabbing ground is within 60 miles one direction or the other. But in the last couple of years, good conditions around the Columbia River have meant heavier volume in that area.
On the southern Oregon coast, the word so far this season is that volume is “slim” at Port Orford and Brookings. As to pricing, some fishermen are hearing of live buyers paying as much as $5.50 a pound.
Just down the dock from Living Pacific is live buyer Xia Zhao, owner of West Coast Seafood. It is her first year working as an independent buyer. She is also paying $4.75 a pound.
“So I am starting slow with one boat, one customer, to make sure I can handle everything right, treat people right and pay people faster,” Zhao said. “So far I’ve had one off-load and the quality is pretty good.”
She does think the quantity may be down this year because it has been better the last few years and volume tends to go in cycles. But it is too soon to know, she said.
Busy docks
Back at Living Pacific, its dock crew dug into bowls of steaming soup from a crockpot while the F/V Natalie Gail finished stowing bait before heading out to begin pulling pots. Deckhands aboard the Gail sorted their bait of tuna, squid, mackerel and clams. The Gail dumped its 300 pots but had to return to port to escape the wind.
Once the Gail cleared, the F/V Payton Elizabeth pulled alongside the dock to offload its crab. The Living Pacific crew sprang into action, lining up totes for the incoming crab and climbing aboard to help unload.
The Elizabeth is Newport-based, but skipper Matt Munkres is from Gig Harbor, Wash. He says they dumped 280 of the boat’s 300 pots before returning to port because of the weather.
“The weather was nasty,” Munkres said. “But we brought in about 3,000 pounds to unload.” He characterized the volume as “mediocre” with about 20 crabs per pot. “But as long as we fetch a good price, we’ll be all right.”
Munkres thinks the crab are heavier this year.
“They’re good,” he said. “We are just going to pick up more bait and a little more line to go deeper. I’m not a local, so I don’t know the shallows so well.”
Down the street at the Fish Peddler’s Market, the first whole-cooked Dungeness crab of the season Wednesday were priced at $8.99 a pound.
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached atGJaros@YachatsNews.com
