Crab lovers will have to hold off on firing up the kettles for a while. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials say the commercial Dungeness crab season has been delayed.
Troy Buell of the department’s Marine Resources program says December 1st was the target date, but now that’s been pushed to mid-December.
“The crab have not filled out with meat, we do testing before each crab season to make sure that we get a good yield of meat out of the crabs.” Buell says, “And there’s a criteria that’s set up amongst the states of Washington, Oregon and California, to set that. And that has not been met yet. And so we’ll continue testing until that is been met.”
Buell adds elevated levels of domoic acid – a naturally-occurring bio-toxin- have appeared in some crabs harvested from up and down the Oregon Coast. The next round of testing will be done by early December, which will determine if the commercial Dungeness crab season is delayed any further.
