California-caught Dungeness crab off the holiday menu

With only two weeks left in 2015, state health and wildlife officials say chances are slim to none that Californians will be feasting on local Dungeness crab this Christmas or any time before next year.

Though overall levels of a naturally occurring neurotoxin called domoic acid have diminished off the coast, enough crabs are still coming back with concentrations above the allowable limit that the fishery will remain closed at least into January, they said.

Public health representatives have said test crabs must come back completely clean for two weeks in a row before they will lift the advisory that prompted Fish and Wildlife officials to put the season on hold.

“Things are definitely improving,” said Patrick Kennelly, chief of the Food Safety Section for the California Department of Public Health. “I unfortunately just can’t quite predict how long before it’s going to be resolved to the point we can open things up.”

The lingering suspension is a blow to coastal fishermen for whom the holiday market is critical to making ends meet, particularly given the meager salmon harvest earlier in the year.

Morale in the fleet is “not good,” said veteran fisherman Stan Carpenter, president of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association of Bodega Bay. “We have some guys that are really, really hurting in my port, and in other ports they’re the same, I’m sure.”

“The stage is set for a potential collapse of the season,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, chairman of the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Large red algae bloom

The sport and commercial crabbing seasons, set to start a week apart in November, were put on hold indefinitely because of a large and persistent red algae bloom along much of the West Coast. It has produced domoic acid that infiltrated the food web, causing large-scale mortality among certain marine mammals and birds and putting several species of shellfish temporarily on the do-not-eat list.

The list currently includes Dungeness crab and rock crab found in waters between Ventura County and the Oregon border. Crab fisheries in Washington and Oregon also have been closed for part of this year. Oregon is said to be readying to open its crab fishery by about Jan. 1.

In California, testing of crab collected in different areas out of eight coastal ports, including Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg, has resulted in significant variations place-to-place and week-to-week.

No one wants to take a chance of bringing in crab that is not completely safe and ready to eat, so once the crab comes to market, consumers can be assured it is safe, state officials and anglers said.

‘People miss it so much’

“It’s just not the holiday market, unfortunately,” said Jordan Traverso, deputy director of communications for state Fish and Wildlife. “But hopefully there will be a huge demand for crab because people miss it so much.”

In the meantime, limited amounts of crab from Washington’s Puget Sound have been available for purchase in Sonoma County. Fish processors say the public is so wary of crab in general right now that they’re largely passing it by.

That crisis of confidence looms large for industry insiders as well as lawmakers and others.

McGuire said he’s scheduled a stakeholder meeting via conference call this week to begin discussing a marketing and education campaign about the harmful algae that set the fishery closure in motion and the natural process through which the crab become safe to eat again.

“This delay is hurting thousands of Californians who are dependent on a robust crab fishery to make their living,” McGuire said, “and to add insult to injury, it’s occurring on the heels of one of the worst salmon seasons that we’ve seen in years, where 95 percent of the California salmon stock died off because of our historic drought.”

Record harvest was $95 million

Dungeness crab is about a $60 million industry in California, though the record harvest of 2011-12 was more than $95 million.

The bulk of those earnings typically are made in the first weeks of the season, as crabbers labor to feed demand for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, though the fishery remains open until June 30.

Exactly what it will mean to lose the holiday market is unclear. It’s unprecedented, said Carpenter, 63.

“We’re in unchartered waters,” said Mike Lucas, president of North Coast Fisheries Inc, the Santa Rosa-based seafood provider.

But Lucas said he hopes pent-up demand will buoy sales when the season finally does open.

“In my mind, Thanksgiving really kicks off crab because it’s the first crab of the year, but it’s not the last time I eat it,” he said.

PR challenge remains

But Lucas, like many others, acknowledged a tough public relations challenge that lies ahead given significant press coverage of the problem and the alarming neurological symptoms that domoic acid poisoning can cause.

Algae blooms happen every year, but the fishery is routinely tested and the shellfish are capable of metabolizing and clearing out domoic acid so they are eventually safe to eat, he said.

“From a consumer standpoint, they really should not be concerned about any crab they see in the stores. Period,” he said.

“We can market uphill fights,” Lucas said. “We’ve done that before. But we can’t market up a hill that no one understands. Domoic acid sounds a lot worse than red tide, but red tides have been around since Moses.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary? Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.?callahan@pressdemocrat.com.?On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.