Dungeness crab at $5.99/lb. Nice! But crab fishers get $2/lb. Tough deal.
Remember a year ago, and the $18.99 up to $24.50 a pound prices? When you hear about a “market correction,” here it is in a dramatic display: a plunge of two-thirds or more. There are plenty of reasons why. For the Dungeness crab fishers, a number of them small operators, it’s tough days. They’re getting $2 a pound, maybe $2.25 a pound wholesale for the crabs. In last winter’s boom times they were getting $5.50 a pound from processors. “I haven’t seen this low a price in over a decade. It’d probably be cheaper not to fish. But we can’t not fish, if that makes sense. We have to keep making our payments or we’ll end up in a loss,” says Jennifer Custer, who does the bookkeeping while her husband, Chuck Custer, runs their 46-foot fishing boat, the Miss Kathleen, out of Westport. >click to read< 09:43
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