This year's Dungeness crab season is the most abundant in years — the ocean is crawling with the sweet 10-legged crustacean.
Hauled out of local waters by the ton, Dungeness crabs are sidling their way into restaurant specials — and onto holiday tables. For many, crab at Christmas is a merry treat, part of a holiday tradition taking advantage of the local seafood star of winter.
In addition to being delicious, Dungeness crabs are little treasures of tasty fun facts: crab mating takes days, and begins with a day-long embrace. When stressed, crabs often jettison a leg as a defense mechanism. And, like some other crustaceans, crab blood is blue, not red, courtesy of an oxygen-carrying compound called hemocyanin. Males can grow to be 9 inches across, weigh 5 pounds and live for almost a decade — unless, of course, they're lured into crab pots by that apparently irresistible smell of oily, stinky meat.
Crab season opens in November and runs through June. To protect the fishery, there are tight restrictions on which crabs can be kept — and which must be returned to their salty, chilly home. This year, an overnight crabbing trip might see a haul of 3,500 pounds, according to Ian Jones, who works on the Sea Breeze out of Santa Cruz harbor.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, CA).
