Crab Season - Our First Year on the Water
Ocean to Table with Your Bare Hands
Crab season is over, as of April 15. This is a Pacific Ocean fact I usually wouldn’t know.
Dungeness Crabs, in my kitchen life, start appearing at the market fish counter in December in time for Cioppino on Christmas Eve.
Or, my mother-in-law would show up with a haul from her friend at the harbor. Maybe someone would call us to help eat a windfall!
But this year, my husband got a little fishing boat. I’m learning about California fisheries law and weather and bait. The limits on crabbing season are directly impacting my weekend— and my stomach.
The windfalls this year have been ours, except that by windfalls, I mean hard-earned scrabbling for what we could get between storm swells, harbor closures, and a season that started late and ended early.
There have been an unusual number of humpback whales in the Monterey Bay this year, and the lines for commercial crabbing are perilous to these mammals. It’s the same for sport fishing, which has its own parallel set …