Saving Seafood

Southwest Florida fishery prepares for uncertain stone crab season

October 15, 2020 — Stone crabbers in Southwest Florida are facing an uncertain season, but meeting it with high hopes and optimism.

The season opens Thursday.

New crabbing regulations from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have cut the season short and raised the size limit of claws. On top of that, the coronavirus pandemic has put the restaurant industry in flux.

“We’re all looking forward to another good season,” said Kelly Kirk, owner of Kirk Fish Company on Marco Island. “This season is a new one for us with COVID and some new regulations, but we’re excited to get back to work. It’s time and we’re ready and fired up for it and hope our customers are, too.”

Read the full story at Naples Daily News

Florida Cuts Stone Crab Season By Two Weeks, After Proposing A Five-Week Cut

July 23, 2020 — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reeled in a compromise after dramatic changes it proposed to stone crabbing made the industry snap.

After originally threatening to shorten the stone crab season by five weeks, the commission conceded to complaints in a virtually held meeting on Wednesday and shortened the season by only two weeks, with a new end date of May 1. The new rules go into effect Oct. 1.

The commission finalized its rules after hosting a series of virtual workshops since June with industry stakeholders, who widely criticized the agency’s original proposals.

On Wednesday, commissioners acknowledged that the new rules – even with a May 1 end of season – would succeed in keeping more than 300,000 pounds of stone crabs from being harvested, which should surpass the agency’s goal of saving 1 million pounds of stone crabs from harvest over a five-year period.

The compromise will allow stone crabbers to enjoy the economic benefit of Easter and Mother’s Day sales, said Bill Kelly, executive director of the Florida Keys Commercial Fisherman’s Association.

Read the full story at WUFT

FLORIDA: First, a hurricane, Then, an algae bloom. Now, Keys fishermen try to weather a pandemic

April 20, 2020 — Ernie Piton and his crew unloaded traps filled with stone crab claws at a Key Largo dock Wednesday afternoon.

The claws were placed in two large steel vats and steamed by propane heat before Piton’s sons, Travis and Ernie III, iced them down and spread them on a white cleaning table to be sorted.

This day’s haul was a good catch — hundreds of claws ranging in size from large to “colossal.”

But this was among the last trips the crew of the Risky Business II will make this season to harvest the Florida delicacy. With restaurants mostly closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Piton and most other Keys commercial anglers are calling it an early season, which is scheduled to end May 10.

Piton, 54, has been in the lobster and crab business for nearly 40 years and is among the most successful operators in the Keys. He said he’ll be able to weather the pandemic, but he feels for the many other commercial anglers who won’t.

“Fishing is like farming,” he said. “You have to plan ahead.”

Read the full story at the Miami Herald

FLORIDA: Stone crabbers experienced crustacean frustration this season. They say red tide is to blame

May 16, 2019 — The stone crab harvest was down this year — way down — and local crabbers say it was because of red tide.

With Wednesday marking the final day of harvest for the 2018-19 season, several Cortez crabbers left their boats tied up at the dock, rather than scouting for the hard-to-find crustaceans.

“It’s been a very slow year,” said Brian Ibasfalean, production manager for A.P. Bell Fish Company Inc. “The boats are way off. (Tuesday), it was about 15 pounds of stone crab. (Wednesday), so far, nothing. It’s red tide, I’m pretty sure.”

Ibasfalean, who has crabbed most of his life, said he has seen worse years. But this year, crabbers had to sail north to Clearwater and Tarpon Springs to find waters clear of red tide.

Read the full story at The Bradenton Herald

Stone Crabs Offer Second Chance For Keys Commercial Fishing Industry

October 16, 2017 — MIAMI — Tourism has been the focus of a lot of attention — and $1 million in emergency advertising — in the Florida Keys since Hurricane Irma.

But the Keys have another major industry. The island chain makes up the most valuable commercial fishery in Florida — and ranks 10th in the nation, up there with ports in New England, Alaska and Louisiana.

At Keys Fisheries in Marathon, Gary Graves was getting ready for big crowds as the opening of stone crab season approached.

“People know stone crab season like football season,” he said. “Hey, Oct. 15th — it’s stone crab season.”

A few days before the season opened, Daniel Padron was working on stone crab traps at a marina on Stock Island.

“We’ve got some traps in the water, trying to get the last couple ready to go,” he said. “Been backed up because of Irma.”

Read and listen to the full story at WLRN

Joe’s Stone Crab: How a Weird Crab Built Miami’s Legendary Restaurant

April 27, 2016 — MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — It’s Friday afternoon at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach, Florida, and lunch has gotten off to a rollicking start. Mario Batali’s expected in at any moment with a party of several dozen. The Alinea Group’s asked for even more seats to be reserved. Meanwhile, Martha Stewart’s just called in on her way from the airport, and may or may not need a relatively modest table of fewer than 20. And yet another celebrity chef, in the midst of a messy divorce, has called in his regrets and apologetically explained that it’s not a great time to claim his usual table. Meanwhile, the dining rooms are already booming with the laughter and clatter of Miami’s elite—federal judges, businessmen, doctors—chowing down on endless platters of Florida stone crabs with the requisite ramekins of Joe’s signature mustard-mayo sauce.

But Joe’s is like a massive iceberg, and the dining room is just what customers see on the surface. Behind the swinging doors, the sprawling kitchen has all the frenzied efficiency of a well-oiled machine, with cooks, servers, bussers, stockers, managers, and other staff pumping out a constant stream of stone crabs, fish, salads, sandwiches, and Key lime pies under the watchful eye of general manager Brian Johnson. The back rooms, which include its retail and distribution end, and storage and freezer rooms the size of full kitchens in most Manhattan restaurants—would alone cover much of an average city block.

Joe’s is an industry unto itself, turning seafood into hundreds of happy customers every day, and it’s all thanks to the humble Florida stone crab 103 years ago. That’s when Hungarian immigrant Joe Weiss opened up a beachside seafood shack, selling local fish and, eventually the odd-looking local stone crab that no one had really thought to try eating before. “We have a product that is unique and is indigenous to Florida, and that represents our brand by being sustainable,” says Steve Sawitz, Joe Weiss’s great-grandson and the current COO of Joe’s Stone Crab. “That, right along with the other million details gives you a good chance of staying open for a 100 years.”

“It’s Mother Nature’s perfect gift,” chef André Bienvenu says. “And the fact that the restaurant’s over 102 years old itself, proves to me the product continues to get better and better.”

They’re both talking about the special regenerative properties of the Florida stone crab and how it’s fished. The crustacean can regrow lost limbs over and over again. Crabbers twist off the claws and then throw the crab back in the ocean, where they can recover. Restaurants only serve the claws for customers to eat. That means that Joe’s regulars can be confident that they and their descendants will be eating that sugar-sweet, slightly briny stone crab meat for a long time to come. “We were green before going green was a thing,” general manager Johnson says.

Read the full story at Bon Appétit 

What Will Florida’s Stone Crab Season Bring? It’s Complicated

October 14, 2015 — FLORIDA — Today, hundreds of fishing boats heaped with traps will race shoreward from the Gulf of Mexico with the season’s opening day bounty of stone crabs, one of Florida’s highest-grossing fisheries.

So, as the boats head toward shore, seafood wholesalers, retailers and stone crab enthusiasts engage in a bit of prognostication about what this season may bring. Will there be lots? And what will they cost?

It’s complicated.

Last year, the stone crab season set a new record: More than $31 million worth of crab claws were pulled from Florida waters from Oct. 15 to May 15.

But before you start melting celebratory butter, that record was not a good one for Florida diners. The record just means that crabs cost more last year; yields were nearly at a record low, said Ryan Gandy, a crustacean researcher with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in St. Petersburg.

The stone cold fact about stone crabs: Demand exceeds supply. Landings of stone crabs last year were 2.2 million pounds — the only worse year in the past decade was the previous season, with just under 2 million pounds landed. A decent year historically is a landing of more than 3 million pounds of claws (one claw is removed, and crabs are returned alive to the water).

Gandy, whose group runs eight trap lines throughout the fishery from Steinhatchee down to Key West, said he has seen a slight increase in their catch per trap. This is what gives them a sense for how the population is doing.

“We’re starting to see some higher numbers coming in, so we’re thinking there’s some population recovery. To the north, we’re seeing some larger crabs, but we won’t know what it looks like until they start pulling traps.”

Read the full story at Tampa Bay Times