The claws are bigger this year. So is the diesel bill.
Florida's stone crab season is three weeks old, and on the Nature Coast the catch itself is fine — bigger claws, production a little ahead of last year at The Crab Plant in Crystal River. The squeeze is at the fuel dock: AAA put Florida diesel at $6.31 a gallon in mid-September, up from $3.55 a year earlier, and it was still $5.81 days before the Oct. 15 opener. So far the season's answer is absorption — sellers holding last year's prices for customers, and fishermen taking less when the market won't move.
- The catch: at The Crab Plant in Crystal River, co-owner Kelly Kofmehl — in the business since 1988 — told WUFT production is running somewhat higher than last year and the crabs are larger. Easterly winds kept boats off the water for days in the season's second week (Shelly's Seafood Market); Aripeka Stone Crab Company calls its start average, with more cautious customers.
- The cost: AAA's Florida diesel average hit $6.31 a gallon on Sept. 14 — up 63 cents in a single week and up from $3.55 a year earlier — touched a record $6.35 on Sept. 18, and was still $5.81 on Oct. 5, ten days before the opener.
- Who absorbs it: The Crab Plant is holding retail prices at last year's levels and eating the difference. When dock prices don't cover expenses, as Shelly's co-owner Michelle Smith put it, the fishermen make less — the cost lands at both ends of the dock, on the seller and the boat.
- The season framework (FWC): Oct. 15 through May 1; claws only, minimum 2 7/8 inches; the crab goes back in the water alive to grow the claw back. Stone crab season is half or more of the year's income for many Nature Coast fishermen.
Stone crab season on the Nature Coast is having the kind of start fishermen pray for, at prices they didn't. Three weeks in, the word from The Crab Plant in Crystal River — the waterfront institution on the King's Bay side of town — is that production is running somewhat higher than last year and the claws coming in are bigger. Co-owner Kelly Kofmehl, who has been in the business since 1988, told WUFT News the plant is holding its retail prices at last year's levels. What the plant, and everyone else on this coast, cannot hold is the diesel bill.
The numbers behind the squeeze, from AAA: Florida's average diesel price reached $6.31 a gallon on September 14 — up 63 cents in one week, and up from $3.55 a gallon a year earlier. It touched a record $6.35 on September 18, and on October 5, ten days before the season opened, it was still $5.81. A stone crab boat is a small business that runs on diesel: out before dawn, traps hauled by hand, the day's economics decided by the spread between the fuel dock and the fish house. When that spread narrows, someone absorbs it — and this season, by the accounts from Crystal River and Aripeka, everyone is. The Crab Plant absorbs it at the register, holding prices for customers who are, in Aripeka Stone Crab Company co-owner Karri Holliday's phrase, more cautious this year. And when the dock price won't cover a trip's expenses, as Shelly's Seafood Market co-owner Michelle 'Shelly' Smith described it, the adjustment happens the oldest way it can: the fishermen make less.
The season has had weather to go with the prices — easterly winds kept boats tied up for days during the second week, Smith said — and Aripeka calls its own start merely average. But nothing in the reporting suggests the resource is the problem. Stone crabbing is built to be renewable in a way most fisheries aren't: the season runs October 15 to May 1, only the claws come off — 2 7/8 inches minimum — and the crab goes back over the side alive, to regenerate the claw and be caught again another year. The constraint on this fishery, this fall, is not the crabs. It is the cost of going to get them.
Which makes this a Working Florida story in the plainest sense. On this coast, stone crab season is not a sideline — for many fishermen it is half the year's income or more, earned in six and a half months of cold mornings. A good catch year with bad margins pays the boat less than a mediocre catch year with cheap fuel, and no one on the dock gets a vote on diesel. The season is young; prices may ease, and a strong catch held across a whole season can still out-earn a weak one. But the first three weeks have set the shape of it: the claws are bigger this year. So is the bill for going to get them — and for now, the people catching and selling Florida's most famous crab are the ones paying it.