The state’s blue crab industry is in serious trouble, if it isn’t dead already.
That’s how Nancy Lewis, co-owner of Lewis Luther & Son Crab Co. feels.
Sitting at a table last week with photos and newspaper clippings that relate the history of the seafood industry, Mrs. Lewis said there are crab plants in North Carolina that don’t even operate during the winter, and some that don’t operate any more at all.
“Some of the biggest fish companies have closed,” she said. “It’s a sign of the times.”
Crab houses have become extremely scarce in North Carolina. Steve Murphey, environmental health supervisor with the N.C. Shellfish Sanitation Division of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), said that in 1985, there were 42 permitted crab-picking plants in the state.
“Today we have 13,” he said. “They do a lot less work than they used to.”
The numbers the state has on the industry backs up the rather bleak outlook. According to information from Patricia Smith, public information officer with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), the 2007 commercial blue crab harvest was 20.5 million pounds; a drop of 16 percent in one year from the 24.4 million pound harvest in 2006.
There are fewer crabbing trips recently than in previous years, as well. The DMF’s trip ticket program shows that in 2007, there were 49,154 crab pot trips. While this is greater than the 48,109 trips in 2006, it’s a drop from the 82,399 trips in 2003.
These drops are attributed to the same economic factors that affect other types of seafood, as well as other industries – gas prices and foreign imports.
“The blue crab commercial fishery likely faces the same economic threats – rising fuel prices and competition from foreign imports – as other commercial fisheries,” said Ms. Smith.
Mrs. Lewis said not many crabbers can afford to catch them anymore with today’s expenses. According to the AAA daily Fuel Gage Report, as of Monday a gallon of diesel fuel costs $4.706 in North Carolina.
“They (the crabbers) can’t afford the fuel and expenses,” she said. “Almost all of them have found other jobs. There used to be hundreds of crabbers with their own boats; now there aren’t enough crabs for them to pay their fuel bills.”
As expenses have gone up for the crab industry, so has the price of crabmeat. According to a report from the fisheries division on seafood price trends, blue crabs were once sold at 10 cents per pound in 1972 (the equivalent of 50 cents today). In 2007, they were being sold at 88 cents per pound.
Mrs. Lewis’s husband, James-Paul, started Lewis Luther & Son Crab Co. in 1962. The company processed blue crabs, as well as shrimp, fish and clams.
“We had four to five large trawlers, 10 boats altogether,” said Mrs. Lewis. “The large boats were built on-site (at the plant).”
The company started out with 50 pickers to process the crabs. Walking around the company building in Davis, Mrs. Lewis said they used to steam thousands of pounds of crabs at a time. Today, the company is no longer the major employer it once was, with only five employees, its steaming facilities boarded up, unused since they stopped processing crabs in 1998.
“We sold our boats,” said Mrs. Lewis. “In the late 1980s, we had to start importing labor from Mexico.” The company got temporary workers through a federal program.
“We used to get the older ladies (to work in the plant),” said Mrs. Lewis “They loved it; it was like a sewing bee, they’d talk all day. They picked until the day we closed.”
The heyday of the crab industry was in the 1970s and 1980s. Mrs. Lewis said at that time, three-fourths of the state’s crabmeat was sold in Maryland, where they held an annual crab derby. The Lewises would take North Carolina blue crabs to represent their state in the races, and won two of the years they participated.
Although Lewis Luther & Son no longer processes crabs, but is still in the seafood business. The company produces gourmet crab cakes in four varieties: Carolina crab cakes, jumbo lump crab cakes, back-fin lump crab cakes and deviled crab cakes.
Mrs. Lewis said they buy North Carolina crabmeat whenever they can. When it’s not available, the company buys from a dealer in Miami, Fla., which imports the meat from South America, where they have the same species of blue crabs that lives here.
While being in a higher-end, gourmet market means the cakes sell for more, it makes it difficult to sell large numbers.
“We’re never going to process crabs again,” said Mrs. Lewis. “The product isn’t there. There’s been too much pollution and maybe overfishing. There’s been too much development and farm runoff. Core Sound is an outstanding resource water; I don’t want to lose it.”
Mrs. Lewis said many people think they can get rich in the seafood industry, but the thing about the industry is it’s unpredictable.
“You never know what you’re going to get, how much or when,” she said. “Then you sell everything on consignment. The big dealers in New York could cut your price. You have to pay the fishermen on an estimate of what you’ll get.”
While Lewis Luther & Son Crab Co. is changing to meet market demands, Mrs. Lewis said the outlook for the state’s crab industry is “pretty dismal,” particularly in the Carteret County area.
“We’re losing the charm of Down East,” she said. “In the next wave of real estate development, you’ll see a big change.”
Copyright © 2008 - Carteret County News-Times
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