Stone crab season is starting. One tiny change is making a huge difference this year
Look closely at the stone crab claws that will soon be showing up on your dinner plate. They’re going to be bigger than you remember them.
Stone crab season opens at 12:01 a.m. Oct. 15, with several changes meant to strengthen the population of stone crabs that pumps about $30 million into the Florida Keys economy alone.
Among the changes diners will notice, the smallest claws allowed to be harvested — ironically called medium — will be one-eighth of an inch bigger. Claws must now be a minimum 2 7/8 instead of 2 ¾, so about this much longer: ||
That may barely be enough to get caught between your teeth. But scientists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and commercial fishermen who depend on the crab claws say that amounts to about 200,000 pounds of claws that will go unharvested. A generation of crabs will be allowed to grow for an extra year.
“It helps rebuild the strength of the population,” FWC research scientist Ryan Gandy said. “But it’s going to take time to see a major benefit to it.”
Scientists think over the next five years, more than a million pounds of stone crabs will go unharvested and that helps the population breed, grow and remain a renewable source of food, Gandy said.
The other major change is the that the last day of the season will be May 1, two weeks sooner than last year. Scientists had noticed in a study, partnering with fishermen, that stone crabs have started reproducing well into the end of the season. More females with eggs were showing up in traps. Open season on a species is generally not allowed while the animals are spawning or mating.
FWC initially pushed to end the season five weeks earlier but compromised with fishermen, whose livelihoods depend on trapping.
“We’re expecting a banner year,” said Bill Kelly, executive director of the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association. “We’re looking at bigger claws across the board.”
This season also begins with more stone crabs in the water. Last season ended early because restaurants were shut down in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
One other change won’t be obvious to consumers but may be the single most important. The boxes trappers use will have to include a hole that allows undersized crabs caught in the traps to escape. That keeps them from being eaten by larger trapped crabs and makes more room in the trap for crabs that are the legal size.
Fishermen will have until 2023 to alter their boxes but many have already started adapting them since initial studies showed it reduced smaller crabs and other sea life from being caught in the boxes by up to 80 percent, Kelly said.
Overall, the state’s stone crab claw hauls have been down steadily from the late 1980s and 1990s by more than a million pounds a year since about the year 2000. All these new measures, Gandy said, are tied to helping the stone crabs rebound.
That means that the smallest claws may be an even better value. They’re the most popular size claws among resellers like George Stone Crabs, an online retailer that ships never-frozen claws nationally on the same day. Fresh stone crab claws should be showing up at markets and restaurants by Oct. 16.
“I do think this is going to be a great season,” George’s owner Roger Duarte said.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 10:21 AM.
