Dungeness crab season opens after short delay

After a brief delay, the first Dungeness crab cakes of the season should be on Bay Area dinner tables by Thursday.

Tests late Monday confirmed that the catch is mature and meaty enough - allowing crab boat owners and processors to finalize a price for the prized crustacean. In the wee morning hours Tuesday, San Francisco crab boats chugged out through the Golden Gate and dropped their traps. The first load arrived at the docks Tuesday evening.

"The crab are going to start coming in - we put 120 pots in this morning," said Larry Collins, captain of the Autumn Gale and president of the Crab Boat Owners Association of San Francisco.

The Dungeness season in the coastal zone between Pacifica and Bodega Bay kicks off on Nov. 15 each year under state statute. But if the quality of the crab is uncertain, or if the crabbers and seafood wholesalers can't agree on a price, the season hangs in limbo.

Late last week, Collins said, his organization's 40 members were trying to negotiate $2 per pound for their Dungeness hauls, the same price as last year. Then Monday, questions swirled about whether the crabs had added enough mass and whether their shells had hardened sufficiently. As crabs grow, they shed their carapace; the new shell remains soft until the crab bulks up.

Juvenile crab counted in San Francisco Bay in 2007 and 2008 indicated that a healthy crop would be ready by this season, according to state scientists. But in an unusual move, the crab boat owners on Monday brought sample crabs to a processor in Santa Rosa to examine their fleshiness, said Pete Kalvass, senior marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

State regulations require crabbers to toss back all female Dungeness and only keep males that measure 6 1/4 inches across the widest part of the shell. But crabbers themselves appear to have some leeway in determining if their quarry have developed sufficiently.

"They were concerned enough that they did their own tests," Kalvass said. "I've never heard of them doing that before."

Neither the crab captains nor processors would disclose the agreed-to price. But Kalvass believes it is about $1.75 per pound.

Consumers around the Bay Area paid between $3 and $6 per pound for Dungeness last season.

With the testing and haggling out of the way, the crab feasting should begin very soon, said Jeanette Caito, whose family seafood-processing company in San Francisco dates to the late 1800s.

"The season is up and running - just in time for Thanksgiving," she said.