Dungeness crab business is losing out in Oregon after the fisheries authorities imposed restrictions on fishing to safeguard the endangered humpback whales from accidental entrapment.
On August 4, 2023, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission selected to indefinitely extend the fishing moratorium that was originally slated to end this summer.
The Oregon Dungeness crab market was worth $91 million in the 2021-22 fishing year.
US Dungeness crabs, however, are retailing at low prices of between $5.99 and $9 per pound thanks to sufficient supplies. The high landings and the late start to the 2023 season in February are also reasons why frozen supplies can last till the start of the next crab season in October.
Weighing an average 4.5 pounds, the Dungeness crab is the second biggest US crab species after the Alaskan red crab which weighs 28 pounds.
Meanwhile hermit crabs were among the creatures found suffocated together with conch snails in a rarely explored sea hole off Belize. The Great Blue Hole measures 318 meters in width and 124 meters in depth. This is according to divers who became the very first pioneer explorers of the rare trench on August 1, 2023.
Though there are 800 species of hermit crabs in the sea, none beats land hermit crabs as perhaps the most petted crabs in the United States. Americans buy them for as little as $2 and as high as $45 per piece to keep as pets at home.
They are not real crabs or true crustaceans for they miss a hard exoskeleton and lack the ability to generate shells. Thus, they inhabit hard shells of other marine invertebrates such as sea snails, and as they grow in size, they vacate old shells and look for larger ones.
To add salt to the wound, the US hermit crab has another swift food competitor at sea, namely the invasive green crab.
Atlantic waters swarming with Green Crabs
Ranked as some of the five most invasive sea species globally, green crabs are not native to the US waters but now look like real natives. Reports on July 30, 2023 show that these crabs are increasing in numbers on the Nantucket coast.
With their two deadly claws, these small creatures weigh just 60 grams but kill clams and scallops fast. This way, they reduce the food supply of the slow-moving native hermit crabs, thus threatening the livelihood of the latter. From 2019 to 2022, the township of Ipswich, Massachusetts paid bounties to fishermen to net green crabs to save the clam population.
Reports reveal that green crabs first came to US waters around the year 1800 by ships bound from Europe where they are native. Now they swarm the East Coast and West Coast seaboards and virtually traverse all the world’s oceans.
Now they are so abundant that they cost just $5.31 per crab.
The cost of US green crab is between $5.31 and 11.48 per kg. This is 30% less than the price of a snow crab ($15/kg).
223 prices for US crabs have witnessed a staggering drop from the July, 2022 peak of $19 a pound. The average retail price for crabs across the US in August, 2023 is $17.50 a kilo.
The fall in prices is attributable to the gradual switch to other seafood by Americans and the rising total allowable catch (TAC), accounting for sufficient supplies within the US.