Crab Crisis: An Update On The Crab Market

If it seems like you’ve been paying more for crabs lately, you’re not wrong.

Over the last few years, the market price of both crabs and crab meat has increased incrementally.

While crab houses on the Eastern Shore are suffering from a lack of crab pickers, the crab crisis facing Severna Park is much less drastic. Unlike those on the Eastern Shore, crab houses in Severna Park aren’t closing down, but they’re charging more for dishes that use crab.

Many factors contributed to the market changes. The one most commonly cited by local crab house employees was the unideal weather conditions for crabs at the beginning of the season.

Once the water hits 50 degrees, the crabs go into a dormant state for the winter, said Allison Colden, a Maryland fisheries scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The crabs’ metabolisms slow down, and they stay buried during the winter. When the water heats back up, the crabs come out of that state and start moving around.

“When you have a cold winter and the cold temperatures last for a long time, they don’t get that signal until later on that it’s time to get moving and moving down the bay,” Colden said. “Because it was colder through April of this year, it was slow because the water temperatures were still pretty cold, and the crabs were still waking up.”

In addition to a slow start to the season, the harsh winter caused a higher mortality rate in the crabs.

“The cold temperatures lasted much longer, so there was about 35 percent mortality of those adult crabs over winter last year, which was higher than previous years,” Colden said.

However, the season is starting to pick up now.

“We’re starting to see the increase in crabs,” said Bruce Whalen, the general manager at Cantler’s. “They’re catching more crabs now, so it should even itself out now. It was a slow start to the season, for sure.”

Cantler’s and Rey’s Crabs both get crabs from Rippons Brothers Seafood on Hoopers Island. Both said that they haven’t faced shortage issues but have noticed higher prices.

“The people I get from seem to have it. It’s went up a little bit, but I believe that’s just from the lack of crabs early on,” said Rob Yesker, who owns Rey’s Crabs. “It hasn’t affected [business]. All my customers, they’re willing to pay more.”

The Point Crab House and Grill gets its crabs from local watermen and it gets crab meat from ProFish, a distributor based in Washington, D.C. Kristen Walter, the general manager at The Point, said the meat is “definitely more expensive.”

“We did have to raise our prices with basically anything that has crab meat,” Walter said. “It really hasn’t affected business; people are just paying it.”

The 2018 Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources found that there were 371 million crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. The survey found that while juvenile blue crab abundance increased, the overall blue crab abundance decreased.

In 2017, 455 million crabs were reported. The crabs reached a low of 297 million in 2014 but have shown steady improvement since then.

In addition to the weather, a few other factors affect the price of crabs. “There’s a lot going on in the crab world right now,” said Matt Griswald, a sales representative at ProFish.

In July, the Maryland Department of Health warned against consuming crab meat from Venezuela. There were many cases of Vibrio linked to Venezuelan crab meat, which sellers turned to when facing the shortage of crabs in Maryland.

But, Griswald said, Maryland isn’t alone in its shortage of crabs. Foreign countries, including Indonesia and China, have experienced low supplies, and those countries have a big impact on the U.S. market.

“Their supplies have been low, so their prices have been high. When their prices are high, it has a trickle-down effect into all the markets,” Griswald said. “The biggest thing has been more of a global shortage of crab.”

Crabs have greater pressure than ever before, Griswald said. An influx of crabbers is coming from surrounding states to crab on a recreational level, which is affecting supplies.

On July 1, a bill from the Maryland General Assembly went into effect, prohibiting DNR from granting crabbing licenses to non-residents unless the individual’s state of residence grants similar licenses to Maryland residents.

“The consumer has more of a desire for Maryland, or at least domestic, crab meat. There is a big push for that, as well,” Griswald said. “Between the lack of supply overseas and the modern push for local product has created much greater demand for the product. In turn, whenever you have greater demand, you’re going to have lower supply.”