Dungeness crab is a favorite dinner menu item from the docks of San Francisco to Fisherman’s Wharf in Seattle to the top restaurants in Anchorage. With its sweet meat and delicate flavor, Dungeness crab ranks as one of the world’s finest delicacies. So how are Dungeness caught commercially, and are they susceptible to shellfish poisoning?
The commercial Dungeness crab fishery in Alaska began around 1916, and Dungeness crabs were first commercially canned in Seldovia in 1920. Today, Dungeness crabs are canned, frozen, shipped fresh, or shipped live to market.
Commercial fishermen catch Dungeness crabs in circular, steel pots, usually baited with herring or squid. The pots measure 40 inches (101.6 cm) in diameter and 14 inches (35.6 cm) in height. The round steel frames of the pots are wrapped in rubber tubing and then covered with stainless steel mesh. According to regulations, the pots must include two escape rings large enough to allow the undersized crab to exit the pot. The fishing season and the number of pots a vessel can deploy varies by management area in Alaska, but regulations throughout most of the state for pot numbers remain lenient.
Biologists manage the commercial Dungeness fishery by the three S’s: size, sex, and season. Only male crabs over 6.5 inches (165mm) can be harvested, and the fishery is closed during the female molting and mating period from mid-August until the end of September. Because biologists do not survey Dungeness crab populations in much of Alaska, recent research near Kodiak focused on whether legal male crabs have reached sexual maturity and had the chance to mate once or twice. The results of the study indicated the current minimum size limit of 6.5 inches (165 mm) is appropriate for Dungeness crabs in Alaska. Males are approximately four-years old at 6.5 inches, and they have probably mated two or three times.
The meat of a Dungeness crab tastes sweeter than the flesh of either a tanner (snow) or king crab. Approximately one-quarter of the crab’s weight is meat. You cook a Dungeness crab by boiling it in the shell for 20 minutes. Crabs can ingest poisonous algae such as the algae that produce domoic acid or the algae which carry the paralytic-shellfish-poisoning toxin. These toxins are found only in the internal organs of the crabs, so biologists recommend butchering a crab before cooking it. You can butcher the crab by cutting it in half and removing the internal organs and gills. Once you’ve boiled the crab and melted butter for dipping, you are ready to feast!
As always, thank you for reading. I am currently on the road. We had a nice vacation and family reunion in Hawaii, and we are now preparing to return to Anchorage, where we will buy supplies and take our Wilderness First Responder Recertification course. We’ll fly back to Kodiak in early March and then home a few days later. I enjoyed getting away and finding the sun for a few weeks, but I can’t wait to get home and dive into new projects.
In the meantime, I’ll feature two, wonderful authors who have graciously agreed to write guest posts while I finish my travels. I’ll introduce them to you in my next post.
Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.
