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Crab pots ready for deployment.

Sonoma County’s commercial crab fleet is expected to begin fishing this weekend after a strike over prices paid at the dock has delayed the harvest. 

Crab associations in Bodega Bay, San Francisco and Half Moon Bay announced last week the fleets were sitting out this week’s opening because buyers had refused to commit to what they considered to be a fair price.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife had already pushed back the traditional November opening by nearly two months due to concerns over entanglements with migrating whales so the added delay is painful. 

Crab prices have climbed steeply in recent years. But so have costs for the fleet whose representatives complained that prices offered by processors were actually lower than last year.

"I can't think of anything in my daily life, I'm buying that is less expensive than it was six months ago or a year ago," said Dick Ogg of the Bodega Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Association.

He says seafood buyers have since refused to negotiate prices but that the fleet has decided to begin hauling crab this weekend anyway without knowing what they’ll be paid at the dock.

"It's difficult for us to go fishing for something without knowing what we're going to see as an end result," Ogg said.

Crab buyers have cited a pending federal class-action lawsuit alleging price-fixing by buyers as a reason processors won’t set prices in advance. But it remains unclear why the class action lawsuit, which was first filed in 2023, would preclude price negotiations this year but not in seasons past.

Still, crabbers say they weren’t willing to wait for buyers to budge. So as a compromise, they agreed to set out gear this Friday and begin landings over the weekend.

Ogg says he hopes the short delay will keep crabbers in California, Oregon and Washington from flooding the market and driving prices down for each other.

"We felt it was better to wait to see if we could get a higher price, have the volume of the crab be dispersed more evenly, and go from there," Ogg said.

Consumers should be able to buy locally caught Bodega Bay crab as early as Sunday or Monday, weather permitting.