The Dungeness Downer

It’s still early in the season, but it looks as if this Dungeness crab harvest may be almost as bad as last year’s.

“We always say that Dungeness stocks are cyclical, and I’d say that’s pretty accurate this year,” says Nick Furman, director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “Unfortunately, we are in the down part of the cycle.”

Two years ago, Oregon recorded its second-largest harvest, more than 17 million pounds. Last year, for reasons no one can really explain, the take dropped to 7 million.

This year’s fishing started only last week, but pessimism is in the air. “Our average year is about 10 million pounds and let’s say we’d be thrilled to get that,” Furman says. “The way things are shaping up, we might be lucky to get 7 million.”

The crabs so far are running heavy and meaty, says Ron Warner, a crab biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game. He says sampling before the season started indicated that crabs were running about 27% meat; 25% is considered very good.

Prices are fairly reasonable. They opened the season at $1.35 a pound to the fishermen but quickly jumped to $1.50. “Last year it took two days. This year it took three, so I guess we’ve got a little bit better pace than last year,” Furman says.

Where the harvest goes will determine how high prices go. Two years ago in that big harvest, prices ran about $1.15 a pound. In last year’s disaster, prices neared $4 a pound.

In addition, the crabs might come in an awful hurry. Last year’s harvest was late getting up to speed because of stormy weather. For the first month, boats had a tough time getting out to sea. That’s not the case this year as Oregon and Washington have experienced clear skies and smooth sailing.

“The ocean has been fishable every day,” Furman says. “What crab there is out there is coming in rather rapidly. We could end up with a situation where we harvest them all fairly quickly. If the stock is as poor as we think it might be, we might find ourselves scratching our heads in another two or three weeks.

“Of course, we could find ourselves in a situation where an area just keeps producing and producing and producing, and 15 million pounds later, I’m looking like an idiot. That’s happened before.”

Carolyn Olney of the Southland Farmers Market Assn. reports that Jeffrey Lawrence of Winchester Cheese Co. in Winchester is selling his award-winning Gouda-style cheese at some markets. He’s at the Santa Monica market on Wednesday, Riverside on Friday, Corona del Mar on Saturday and Beverly Hills on Sunday.