Crab Sharecroppers?

Hello Fishies!

What follows is from an article appearing in the Daily World about a week ago. While it is a bit dated, as in the season has begun, the information is still very relevant and will help you to understand what the boats go through.

“None of the major packers have made an offer we can live with, even though the market is much stronger than last year,” said Toste, head of the Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen’s Association. “It appears the entire coastal fleet will remain tied up until the packers make a reasonable offer and quit treating the fishermen like sharecroppers.”

Toste said there are “some small, independent buyers who are willing to pay a reasonable price for the crab, but they are not capable of handling much product and they live in fear of market reprisal by the major packers when they buy and sell.”

Both coastal tribal communities and the department tested crabs in Long Beach and Westport in October to determine the meat recovery rate, said Reed, of the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Meat pick-out” testing determines the percentage of meat in the crab and the state requires that 23 percent of the crab’s weight be in meat, Reed said. Tribal fleets are not bound by the state requirement and are able to choose their own percentages, she said.

The department tested Long Beach again in November and found the crabs met the requirement and were ready for harvest. The department could not test Westport again in November due to harsh weather, so it applied the findings in the first Westport test against Long Beach’s rate to project how much the Westport crabs had grown.

The projection “indicated those crabs were a little behind the crabs off Long Beach in their recovery,” Reed said. The crabs are expected to reach the 23 percent standard in early December, she said.

Overall, Toste said the fishermen are uncertain of how they should proceed with the season.

“The decisions made by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife affecting our seasons are drawing a lot of criticism from Washington fishermen,” he said. He said these decisions are creating feelings of “frustration, anxiety and uncertainty.”

The staggered season is “not giving us much bargaining power” with the packers on the price per pound, Toste said. “Washington fishermen are in a very bad position to market fairly because only a small area opens on Dec. 1,” he said.

He said the price negotiations are affecting well over 1,000 boats and estimates that upwards of 10,000 people are affected when the fisherman don’t bring in their crab, including crabbers, processors, supply companies, support staff and the families of all those workers.

“No one knows what to do,” he said. “We are just dying here with anxiety and frustrations. This is the worst anyone has seen in the crab industry for 40 years.”

Reed and Toste agree that Dungeness crab fishing is vital to Washington State. “It is an amazing and valuable fishery,” Reed said. “It is good for the state of Washington and very important to coastal communities.”

There are about 30 to 40 boats in the tribal fleet and 228 in the non-tribal fleet, according to Reed and Toste.

Stay tuned.

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