BUSINESS NEWS
Coast River Business Journal
January 2021 • 9
Pandemic, domoic acid upend fresh crab market
Story & Photo by Edward Stratton
Coast River Business Journal
estratton@crbizjournal.com
the main overall big picture. It’s usually down in
the communities, I think is where the impact gets
felt the most.”
This year hit particularly hard, Shirley said,
with the coronavirus pandemic zapping the cus-
tomer base for fresh crab starting with the Chinese
Lunar New Year almost a year ago.
“For me, the Chinese new year is just as import-
ant as the Christmas holiday,” he said. “Last year,
they shut us down. We were shut down right before
the Chinese New Year. They canceled the biggest
celebration they have in the world.”
Shirley’s restaurant distribution has gone down
by 80%, he said, with wholesalers buying a frac-
tion of what they used to. A spokesman for the
West Coast Seafood Processors Association said
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that government closures during the pandemic had
caused demand for crab at restaurants to fall by
70%.
The coronavirus has added even more uncer-
tainty to typically tense price negotiations that kept
most West Coast crabbers at the docks in December.
“It’s defi nitely a signifi cant impact to the price
when you remove the customers,” Shirley said.
“It’s supply and demand. And a lot of fi shermen
are basing prices on a live market, when truly the
frozen, cooked market is what makes this whole
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industry solid.”
The closer the opening date gets to the Chi-
nese Lunar New Year, the weaker the live market in
Asia will be, Shirley said. But he expects a strong,
pent-up domestic demand.
“You’re going to have a lot more people that are
buying crab meat in the grocery store than in previ-
ous years, I believe,” Shirley said. “People like crab
salads, they like their crab cakes, they like those
things, and people are adapting a lot more to their
kitchens and making a lot more at home.”
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Q:
Price negotiations and domoic acid levels kept most Dungeness crab fi shermen at the docks into 2021.
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It’s been four or fi ve years since Mike Shirley,
a co-owner of Ilwaco Landing, has been able to
land fresh Dungeness crab for Christmas. Shirley
and other partners also own Fishpeople Seafood, a
retail market in Ilwaco.
“It’s hard,” he said. “People in the Pacifi c
Northwest expect fresh crab for Christmas.”
Amid climate change and worsening ocean con-
ditions, Shirley and other shops and buyers have
had to adapt to fresh Dungeness crab no longer
being a staple for Americans during the holidays.
Fisheries managers in Oregon and Washing-
ton most recently delayed the start of crab season
through at least Jan. 15 because testing showed
dangerously high levels of domoic acid in the vis-
cera. The delay meant no crab could be landed
north of the Port of Garibaldi.
Malcolm Cotte, who opened FishStix Seafood
Market in Warrenton in November, had one case of
whole-cooked crab available just before Christmas.
All of his wholesalers were out because of delays
related to domoic acid, lackluster shellfi sh growth
and whale entanglement rules in California.
Clams and oysters picked up the slack. But
it was a challenging fi rst holiday season trying
to build a customer base for Cotte without fresh
Dungeness crab.
“Probably less than 50% will settle for previ-
ously frozen,” Cotte said of his customers.
Tom Novotny, a spokesman for the Oregon
Dungeness Crab Commission, said the fi shery
has had some of its best years fi nancially over the
last decade despite delays into January becoming
routine.
“The fi shery hits usually 80% of the catch in the
fi rst week, and that seems to be a fairly standard
mathematical equation, whether it’s the fi rst eight
weeks after January, or whether it’s the fi rst eight
weeks starting in December,” Novotny said. “The
big impact is usually felt a little further outside of
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