October 14, 2015 — FLORIDA — Today, hundreds of fishing boats heaped with traps will race shoreward from the Gulf of Mexico with the season’s opening day bounty of stone crabs, one of Florida’s highest-grossing fisheries.
So, as the boats head toward shore, seafood wholesalers, retailers and stone crab enthusiasts engage in a bit of prognostication about what this season may bring. Will there be lots? And what will they cost?
It’s complicated.
Last year, the stone crab season set a new record: More than $31 million worth of crab claws were pulled from Florida waters from Oct. 15 to May 15.
But before you start melting celebratory butter, that record was not a good one for Florida diners. The record just means that crabs cost more last year; yields were nearly at a record low, said Ryan Gandy, a crustacean researcher with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in St. Petersburg.
The stone cold fact about stone crabs: Demand exceeds supply. Landings of stone crabs last year were 2.2 million pounds — the only worse year in the past decade was the previous season, with just under 2 million pounds landed. A decent year historically is a landing of more than 3 million pounds of claws (one claw is removed, and crabs are returned alive to the water).
Gandy, whose group runs eight trap lines throughout the fishery from Steinhatchee down to Key West, said he has seen a slight increase in their catch per trap. This is what gives them a sense for how the population is doing.
“We’re starting to see some higher numbers coming in, so we’re thinking there’s some population recovery. To the north, we’re seeing some larger crabs, but we won’t know what it looks like until they start pulling traps.”