February 21, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The fact that many boats stopped fishing dungeness crab over the weekend spurred confusion in the market place, as some buyers heard that the fishery was halted due to a price dispute.

Our story yesterday focused on one report of a sale below the $2.75 price that has been standard along the coast since the season opened.

Buyers were quick to correct the mistaken impression about prices.

Many processors were plugged with crab, and needed the long holiday weekend to catch up and the crabbers took a ‘long overdue’ break due to weather as well.

According to Michael J Freels, of Caito Fisheries, Crescent City, “We  all needed time to catch up on processing, freezing and packaging  of our crab.  The crab fleet offered to stop fishing over the weekend, to allow most processing plants to get caught up.

“It was not a price dispute, the way SeafoodNews mistakenly characterized it yesterday.”

“Monday was a holiday and most of the unionized public cold storages were closed, so we couldn’t transfer frozen crab from our holding freezers” said Freels.

He says that packers “need a little breathing room” to catch up. We want to continue to put out a good quality product, and that entails slowing down the offloading”

Now, after the weekend things are back on track, boats are fishing, and crabbers are getting paid.

Dungeness remains the best value among all the crab species right now, and with the fishery on track, everyone hopes to see crab sales strengthen.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.