On Tue, 12 Mar 2002 11:17:14 -0900, Kent Lind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>No, the Alaska King crab was never on the endangered species list.

Of course not.  :-)  I've been eating them in restaurants, buying them
at Harry's in Atlanta, and if it were indeed an "endangered species" in
the ecology or ESA sense, none of that would have been possible.


>Here's the complete list of marine species listed under the ESA
>
>http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/species/ESA_species.html
>
>Your restaurant owner was probably confusing crab abundance with formal
>listing under the ESA.  There's a big difference.

The restaurant owner couldn't care less.  :-)  It was an obvious piece
of hyperbole that I embellished, in the spirit of Strike's Tall Tale, to
make a big deal out of my 20-year quest for ALL THE KING CRAB I CAN GORGE
in a restaurant.

It doesn't need a genius to realize that was not a "scientific statement",
and it would only take a mindless nitpicker to make a federal case of it.

However, I hasten to add I am not saying YOU are the nitpicker, but simply
took the platform setup by the nitpicker to provide us some pertinent
"scientific info" on the subject of endangered species in marine species.


>From the point of view of the restaurant owner, king crab
>are probably pretty endangered if the populations are so low that they
>aren't even being commercially fished.

Actually it's their pocketbook that's endangered if they try to charge
not-completely-outrageous price for ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Alaskan King Crabs
when the abundance is low, hence the price high.  :-)   In Boston around
1990, it was about $30 a lb.  In Atlanta in the past several years, they
were usually around $18-$20 a lb (frozen, including the weight of ice
inside the legs and the weight of the shells).  Thus, it is a rather
EXPENSIVE item to serve at an "unlimited quantity".  According to my
conservative estimation, the cooked King Crab legs I CAN eat in one
sitting (at the restaurant in question) if I don't eat anything else but
King Crabs, could easily be at the ATL price of $100 for the raw
material of King Crab meat, and the restaurant only charged $30 in 1982
for the buffet and $37 for the same buffet now.


>But even at their lowest levels,
>king crab populations still numbered in the millions throughout Alaska and
>were in no danger of extinction.

Of course, but the temporary scarcity drove up the price, and that's
Economics 101.   There were various statistical studies of the King Crab
migration and survival data -- in a database established by the American
Statistical Association for data analysis by statisticians.  But none
suggested possible extinction as in the case of white sharks, bald eagles,
or other more abundant species.


>If you are finding cheap
>king crab on the market, it is *probably* brown king crab imported from
>Russia.

I have NEVER found any cheap Alaskan King Crab.  Even the Mexican King
Crabs ain't cheap -- at least the way Albert charges them in Cozumel. :-)
Now that you mention the different species of King Crabs, I can tell
a Mexican one from an Alaskan one, by sight or taste, but damned if I
can tell a brown one from a red one or Alaskan vs Russian, if they all
have arms as big as popeye's and big long legs that look RED after
being cooked.


>The snow crab fisheries have also crashed.

I sure couldn't tell from my own eating habit on those critters alone!
They are sold in grocery stores around $5 a lb and the ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT
buffets that includes them on the menu are usually less than $10 for the
entire buffet.  There's a restaurant in Atlanta that must serve at least
a TON of these every day!  No exaggeration.  :-)  Well, perhaps a teeny
tiny bit.   That's a HUGE Chinese buffet restaurant that's full all day
long, and waiters bring out 20-30 lb huge trays of them every few minutes.
It doesn't take a mathematical genius to estimate how long it would take
to make a TON.  :-)

>Harvests of snow crab peaked at
>over 300 million in the early 90s and are down to less than 1/10th of their
>historic high.  The most recent snow crab quota was about 28 million lbs.

While that may be the case globally, I can assure you that the Alaskan
SNOW crab consumption has been on the rise, by HUGE margins, in the
SE States of the USA -- and they include the ones in which I GORGE these
critters, regularly over the years -- S. Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.


>Despite the problems in the commerical crab king fisheries, there are still
>plenty out there for divers.  The personal use season for red king crab in
>Southeast Alaska lasts about 6 months.  I see hundreds of them while diving
>but they're mostly females or undersize.  But you have to be an Alaskan
>resident to catch king crab for personal use.  We don't let the tourists
>touch them!

The tourist only EAT them.  :-)

I was in Alaska (Anchorage) last year, and I couldn't find any good Alaskan
King Crab restaurant.  Perhaps they only EXPORT them.  Just like the
Mexicans.  They export ALL their shrimps, and then have to import them
back -- which is why shrimps (especially the Grande ones) are so expensive
and scarce in Mexican restaurants.  :-)
>
>Kent Lind
>Juneau, Alaska

In the final analysis, all of this is just a bunch of crab!   :-))

-- Bob.