Stone crab season is poor one

By Steve Estes

Florida’s stone crab season closed yesterday, and for most of those in the commercial fishing industry, only one word sums up the season—bad.

Prices at the wholesale and retail levels remained strong throughout the season, but “Somebody forgot to tell the crabs that we were paying good money for them,” said Bobby Holloway, owner of Fanci Seafood seafood market on Cudjoe Key.

He said that catch this year was down about 30 percent from last year, and last year was poor compared to year’s prior.

“This is the worst year I can remember in a long time,” said Holloway.

Florida normally brings in about three million pounds of stone crab during a normal season, with Monroe County accounting for about 30 percent of that total. And though the final numbers aren’t in yet, officials believe that the catch total might be around two million pounds this year with only 600,000 pounds coming in to Monroe County docks.

“The crab just weren’t out there,”said Holloway.

The back-to-back lousy seasons have officials scrambling to find some reason for declining crab populations.

The best answer he’s heard, says Holloway, came from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“They stopped short of saying that the fishery is being over fished, but did send out a notice early in the year that they believed the fishery was ‘fully exploited.”

He said he’s sure that the low catch counts fr two years succeeding years will have officials scrambling for answers, or fixes, before the season opens again later this year, “But we’ve heard nothing about plans for the future,” Holloway said.

Another down year could, however, prove devastating to the stone crab fleet, particularly in Monroe County.

The shortage of crab kept wholesale prices to the boats high, about $9 per pound for medium crab claws and approaching $30 per pound for colossal claws.

But that didn’t guarantee anyone making money with such a diluted catch.

In areas where money wasn’t an object for retail sales, the retail counters did very well when they had product,” said Holloway. “But in smaller areas like here, people just turned away from retail stone crab due to the high price.”

Marguerita Lopez, who runs a 600-trap operation out of Marathon, said she pulled her gear from the water about a month before season’s end.

“We were pulling hundreds of traps a day, and barely making enough in catch to pay the boat expenses. It was cheaper for us to pull the gear out of the water than continue to lose money running the boat,” she said.

A shortage of crab wasn’t the only issue that bedeviled crab season this year.

The major supplier of pig’s feet, the principal bait for crab traps, was purchased by a Chinese conglomerate just before season’s start. Product deemed inedible by US standards, and thus available for crab trap baits, was being sold to Chinese markets for food supply.

“There were a few weeks we couldn’t get bait for the fishermen. They had to try other baits,” said Holloway.

“We need a rebound next year or we’re going to see some of the smaller operations fold up shop and sell their boats,” he said.

No Comments »

Leave a Reply