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Thursday, September 30, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M. Dungeness crab has inspired native lore, smacking lips and a fall festival By Stuart Eskenazi
The genesis is revealed through Indian legend, narrated on a plaque at a Highway 101 turnout on the Jamestown S'Klallam Reservation, overlooking Sequim Bay. "In the old days, before the world came to be the way it is today, a giant crab blocked the entrance to the bay. This prevented the people living nearby from making use of their accustomed fishing grounds." A physically weak boy who lived in the village set out to outsmart the crusty crustacean. "He saw the giant crab there, and he sneaked along the ocean floor in a way so that the crab was unable to see him. By doing this, he was able to attack the crab from behind, rendering the huge and fearless creature powerless. After having chewed up the monstrous crab, he spit the pieces into the bay, saying: 'May these pieces turn into small crabs, and be a means of livelihood to all the people in the future.' "
The Pacific Northwest makes big fusses over our native foods — think apples and cherries and salmon and clams — yet the Dungeness crab seems to scoot beneath the surface of it all, underwater and underappreciated. No wonder the creature seems annoyed all the time. But the days of treating the Dungeness crab like a cancer are over, thanks to a group of promoters in the North Olympic Peninsula who had the good sense to start a Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival. This year's event, the third annual, is Oct. 9-10 in Port Angeles and features a community crab feast and other food booths on the pier. In spite of a wind and rain storm, about 5,000 people attended last year's festival.
The Dungeness crab lives in waters from Alaska to California — and Fisherman's Wharf of San Francisco incorporates a drawing of one into its logo. Those pushy Californians may have been able to take the crab out of the Pacific Northwest, but they can't take the Pacific Northwest out of the crab. "The Dungeness crab is part of our culture and well worth celebrating," said Neil Conklin, festival executive producer. "We are trying to create awareness that this is where the Dungeness crab came from." The captain and the crab
Crab, of course, already inhabited the bay, getting along just fine without a fancy name to give it commercial credibility. It got its brand several decades later when exporting began — the first shellfish ever harvested commercially on the northern Pacific Coast.
Close to where Vancouver landed is the Dungeness Landing county park and boat launch, which looks out onto Dungeness Bay, the San Juans, Mount Baker and the New Dungeness Lighthouse on the tip of the spit. (The spit is a wildlife refuge and closed to motor vehicles. The 1857 lighthouse, while open to visitors, is accessible only by a really long hike down the spit or by kayak.) A small wooden structure on a pier at Dungeness Landing houses the storage and packing facility for Jamestown Seafood, a division of the tribe. A weathered sign naming it "The Oyster Shack" does not do justice to the crab commotion going on inside. Jamestown deals only in live crabs, packing them on their sides, back to belly, two layers deep, inside insulated cartons. Depending on the weight of individual crab, between 20 and 30 can be shipped in a single box. Gel ice packs keep them cool and a shot of oxygen keeps them alive during their trip. The trick to packing without getting pinched is in "shocking" the crabs with cold water, which puts them in a dormant state. As soon as Jamestown purchases the catch from commercial fishermen, the crabs are placed in tanks of cold water — about 40 degrees — and trucked to the Oyster Shack. There, the crabs are transferred into 300-gallon Rubbermaid tanks. The tank water is chilled, but at least once a day, the water must be refreshed so that the crabs do not die from the ammonia produced by their own waste. As the warmer water is pumped in from Dungeness Bay, the crabs wake up and become quite agitated, the tank turning into a frothy cauldron of pincers. The water must be cooled immediately because if too many crabs fight, claws will be lost in battle. And in this business, an amputated crab is a worthless crab.
"Like a barrel of monkeys," plant manager Dan Schleve said while peering into a tank where crab caught that morning in Hood Canal waited to be shipped to markets in Houston, Phoenix, Rochester, N.Y., and suburban Atlanta. Conceivably, a crab caught Monday morning in Hood Canal could be on a dinner table in another part of the country by Tuesday evening. Jamestown Seafood does not sell retail, but Schleve will answer questions if you visit the Oyster Shack. If you are lucky, your visit will coincide with the daily water change. Keep a safe distance, but just in case, take note of Schleve's lesson, learned through experience: The only way to unattach a pincer from your flesh is to break off the entire claw. It tenses up and tightens its grip for a second, but then releases. Cooking and counting
High Tide sells only cooked crab, fresh or frozen, whole or in sections. Its customers are brokers and distributors who sell to grocery chains and restaurants. Partner Jim Shefler said some of the crabs sold at Pike Place Market come from High Tide. During the festival, High Tide will be one of about a dozen vendors selling sampler plates on the Port Angeles Pier, the menu including crab cakes, crab rolls and crab-and-shrimp cocktails. Inside the plant, which is not usually open to visitors, an overhead crane lowers cages containing as many as 700 crabs into cook tanks below. They are boiled for about 30 minutes and then chilled for another 45. "The customer base for Dungeness crab is reasonably stable although we have seen an increase in demand the last couple years for our frozen crab sections," Shefler said. The increase has a lot to do with quotas on the supply of Alaskan king crab, which is the more familiar western variety sold back east. Though the abundance of Dungeness in our waters varies from year to year, it is a more dependable fisheries resource than other shellfish such as oysters or clams. The Dungeness does not filter bacteria, as bivalves do, and therefore is not susceptible to paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, which can ruin a shellfish harvest season.
Harvesting female, soft-shell or undersized Dungeness is prohibited. Each Pacific Northwest crabbing season, between 70 percent and 90 percent of the eligible crab are caught, making it an efficient fishery, said David Armstrong, who as director of the University of Washington's Department of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences has done substantial research on the Dungeness crab. "The greatest threat to the resource is not from overfishing but from ongoing habitat destruction," he said. Lessons from the deep
About 25 percent of a crab's weight is edible meat, Armstrong said. So for a crab selling at $6 a pound, the cost for picked meat really is a pricey $24 a pound. At the festival, those with large appetites can buy a steamed whole crab, with cole slaw and corn, for a price still to be determined. "The showcase of the festival is the food," said producer Conklin, whose restaurant, Bella Italia, will be selling crab-and-tomato bruschetta and steamed mussels. Elaine Grinnell, 67, an elder in the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe, also is participating in the festival, cooking salmon on the beach and telling native stories, like one about three little crabs that waited out a storm with their grandmother by hiding under a large rock. One by one, each of them ventured out to the top of the rock to check on the storm until it finally cleared. The moral: No matter the size of people, they should be allowed to accept responsibility as even their smallest efforts can prove important.
Grinnell routinely tells stories to schoolchildren that feature the crab, and the crab is used in schools to help teach anatomy. Crab brought money into Grinnell's family — her grandfather caught and sold Dungeness and she, too, was a commercial fisherman — as well as providing a staple for their diet. "We would cook them on the beach by boiling them in sea water," Grinnell said. "To this day, I prefer my crab warm, straight out of the cooker instead of chilled. It's like our lobster. The Dungeness crab has always made us feel like we were the elite." Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
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