For the first time that many people can remember, California’s Dungeness crab season will not open in time for Christmas, spoiling thousands of holiday feasts in the Bay Area and driving a spike of economic pain deeper into fishermen, wholesalers, restaurants and other businesses that rely on December sales of the regional delicacy.
The latest tests of crab from Crescent City to Monterey this month show levels of domoic acid, a neurotoxin produced by microscopic algae, have not dropped below federal safety limits in most fishing grounds on the North and Central coasts. The best-case scenario now is for the season to open sometime in January.
“The domoic acid Grinch took our Christmas crab!” said Phil DiGirolamo, owner of Phil’s Fish Market, a popular spot for crab lovers in Moss Landing.
There is a sliver of hope for crab lovers. Determined shoppers should be able to find some out-of-state crab. But supplies are limited, and prices are high — in some cases, twice the usual amount. Much of it is frozen, not live or freshly caught.
DiGirolamo recently imported some live crab from British Columbia, and he hopes to get more soon from Washington, where some areas now have opened to fishing after a domoic acid-related delay but others remain closed.
Dan Strazzullo, owner of Peninsula Seafood in San Bruno, already has some crab from Washington, but consumer demand has been poor.
“People are afraid of them,” he said. “They think they’re going to die.”
Matthew Rich, of San Jose, is one of many people in the Bay Area who have long incorporated sweet and meaty Dungeness crab into their holiday meals. Every year, he buys three or four live crab and cooks them for Christmas Eve dinner with his wife, parents and a couple of friends.
“We reminisce about the old days and gorge ourselves on crab,” said Rich, 59, who began the tradition to honor one of his favorite childhood memories. On trips to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, his parents would take him to a shack in the courtyard of The Cannery, where they would order crab meat sandwiches on freshly baked bread.
This year, the disappointed crab lover will serve lobster. He said he’s not afraid of domoic acid, but he doesn’t want to pay top dollar for live crab that have been trucked nearly 1,000 miles from Washington, which could affect their quality.
However, plenty of others are spooked by domoic acid, which in mild doses causes gastrointestinal illness and in rare cases may be fatal. The chemical is always present at low levels in crab, mollusks and other marine life, but the biotoxin spiked to unsafe levels this year because of harmful algal blooms that proliferated along the Pacific Coast. Scientists say the blooms, the largest ever observed, were bolstered by record-breaking warm temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
The lingering toxin — which, in a possible Freudian slip, some in the crab business mistakenly pronounce as “demonic” acid — delayed the openings of the commercial crab seasons in California, Oregon and Washington. Oregon, like California, remains closed.
The delays have disrupted an industry that in California brought fishermen nearly $67 million last year. But the economic effect of the closure goes far beyond fishermen, many of whom are struggling to pay their bills.
Robin O’Connor, general manager of Princeton Seafood Co., a restaurant next to Pillar Point Harbor, said that business this month is down about 80 percent compared to December 2014. He compared Princeton-by-the-Sea, a tiny coastal community that relies on the fishing industry to draw tourists, to Rust Belt communities devastated by factory closures.
“It’s completely decimated the entire town,” said O’Connor, adding that media coverage of the domoic acid health threat has scared the daylights out of consumers, who are “afraid of seafood in general right now.”
The scene is similar at Fisherman’s Wharf, said Angela Cincotta, treasurer of Alioto-Lazio Fish Co., a family-run business that sells to wholesalers, restaurants and the public.
“The streets are deserted — it’s bad,” she said. “Some of our restaurants now are coming in for one or two crabs to get them through the week instead of 150 to 200. It’s unheard of.”
The ripples of the closure extend even further, said Max Boland, vice president of sales for Alber Seafoods Inc., a distributor with processing plants in San Francisco and Crescent City. Sales are slow for companies that sell materials for catching or shipping crab, from traps to cardboard boxes.
“It trickles all the way through,” Boland said. “I walked into a marine store the other day and asked, ‘How many ropes have you sold?’ And they said, ‘None.’ “
The closure also has begun to affect crab feeds, a fundraising pillar for many churches, schools and other groups. Peninsula Seafood serves more than 150 crab feeds in Northern California, most of which take place from January to March, according to Strazzullo. Two already have canceled their orders, he said, while 20 or so have made nervous inquiries. He’s implored them to wait a bit longer before switching their main dish to beef or chicken.
The price of live crab at Peninsula Seafood’s small retail outlet on El Camino Real is $11.99 a pound, up from about $6 last year. Consumers who don’t mind crab that’s been frozen can find less expensive alternatives. Costco Wholesale in Foster City last week was selling cooked, previously frozen crab, likely from Alaska, for $7.99 a pound.
Strazzullo said he feels guilty charging so much, but he has no choice. He paid a premium for the crustaceans to be trucked down from Washington. Some of it came from a place called Cape Disappointment, which more or less sums up how the crab season has gone thus far.
“You don’t want to tell people you’re selling crab from Cape Disappointment,” Strazzullo said with a laugh.
Contact Aaron Kinney at 650-348-4357. Follow him at Twitter.com/kinneytimes.
