Consumers could benefit from the postponement of the 2025-26 Oregon commercial Dungeness crab season’s opener to December 16, 2025 to allow enough meat fill.
The Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) first posted this delay on November 21, 2025, leaving the traditional December 1 opening to recreational fishers.
This echoes the 2024-25 season, which also launched mid-December before a smooth run ensued.
All major fisheries of the western state apart from border waters have nevertheless passed meat fill and biotoxin tests.
The sole exception is Long Beach in Washington, a part of the West Coast’s Tri-State Dungeness crab fishery standard.
This standard stipulates all areas to pass readiness tests before any member state can launch its season.
Long Beach, which lies on the southwestern Pacific coast of WA, is yet to pass the 23% meat fill breakthrough.
The ODFW states that should Long Beach fail to meet the requirement, a partial harvest could open south of Cape Falcon.
Meat Fill
Meat fill tests go together with other chemical tests that help determine proper market size and seafood safety.
For consumers, sizeable specimen means extra protein while for fishers it indicates value since big sizes garner decent prices.
The size test involves measuring the crab to ascertain that is is sufficiently fat, at 23% of its mass. These crustaceans normally average 1 to 4 pounds and yield meat equal to 25% of their weight.
Safety tests measure biotoxin, a marine chemical from algae that shellfish consume and keep as domoic acid.
According to the University of Oregon, extremely high domoic acid levels may pose consumer risk – and the fishery cannot open then.
Luckily, the 2025-26 season so far promises to have neither meat fill lapse nor biotoxin excess. The stats below in turn examine how important the fishery is to the Pacific state.
Oregon Dungeness Crab Statistics
Since 1889 when it first landed the first substantial commercial haul at 6,628 pounds, Oregon has been fishing the crustacean commercially. It has been averaging 18 million pounds in recent years. In bountiful years the state harvests 37.181 million pounds (2023), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In lesser years the landings come to 15 million pounds (2024-25), per the University of Oregon. The university’s marine biologist Alan Shanks predicts the 2025-26 season to garner 30 million pounds or 1.5 times above average.
What is Oregon’s Tri-State crab rankings ?
Of the Tri-State constorium that fishes Dungeness crab on the West Coast, Oregon ranks second after Washington in annual catch. In 2023, Washington landed 36.122 million pounds, followed by Oregon, then California.
Why is the Dungeness crab fishery important to OR?
Oregon prides in its Dungeness crab riches for they account for 40% of the annual harvested seafood value. In 2023, the state earned $104,139,428 from the fishery, after landing 37,181,040 pounds.