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You know it’ll be a good Christmas for seafood lovers (and people who earn their living catching those hauls) when Oregon’s commercial Dungeness crabbing season opens in December.
On Dec. 16, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that crabbers could begin dropping their pots off the state’s coastline.
Specialty seafood markets—from Portland’s Flying Fish and TwoXSea inside Providore Fine Foods to Barnacle Bill’s in Lincoln City—are advertising Oregon Dungeness crab for sale. Larger retailers like Safeway and Fred Meyer also indicate on their websites that they have Dungeness in stock.
That means if you prefer the sweet, tender meat of a crab over roast beef or turkey, you should be able to find a source for a local catch just in time for your holiday meal.
The earliest the crabbing season can begin is Dec. 1. But it’s often delayed due to everything from dangerous levels of biotoxins in the crustaceans to low meat yield. The latter is what pushed back the start of commercial crabbing from the start of the month this time around. Some years, crabbing doesn’t get underway until January or February.
Commercial operators can catch crabs right now from Cape Foulweather, located about 3 miles south of Depoe Bay, to the California border. However, preseason tests revealed that crabs from Cape Foulweather to the Washington border still don’t have enough meat to proceed with the harvest in that area. In the coming days, ODFW officials will test the crabs there again—for both yield and biotoxins—to figure out whether the season can open on Dec. 31.
Even though crabbing is only allowed on half of our coastline, those crustaceans are already making their way to stores and restaurants across the state.