California Crab Season Delayed over Toxins

Crabs have been showing a unsafe level of biotoxin that is produced by harmful algae blooms that have proliferated in the Pacific Ocean this year.

Health officials on Tuesday warned people to avoid eating Dungeness and rock crabs.

Yesterday, wildlife biologists reported finding domoic acid in the tissue of 36 animals stranded off the California, Washington and Oregon coasts.

The season will stay closed until the Department of Health and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment say the crabs are safe to eat.

The state Fish and Game Commissio n will meet Thursday to vote on the Dungeness delay and the rock crab closure.

The California Department of Public Health is warning people not to eat crabs caught along the California coast until further notice.

Domoic acid poisoning from the ingestion of tainted crabs can cause vomiting and dizziness and in severe cases lead to seizures or death, California’s Public Health Department said in a statement.

Dungeness crab season was originally slated to begin on November 15, but officials will not be taking risks.

Unfortunately, cooking the crabs doesn’t make a difference, food safety expert Darin Detwiler, senior policy coordinator at the nonprofit STOP Foodborne Illness and adjunct professor at Northeastern University, tells Yahoo Health.

“We understand the necessity for the closure”, said George Osborn, who represents the Coastside Fishing Club, a San Francisco Bay Area recreational fishing group. “None of us like it. You don’t like it. We don’t like it. But we don’t anybody getting sick”.

Bill Gerard, a commercial rock crab fisherman from Santa Barbara, told commissioners that they should permit sales of crab claws because the neurotoxin is concentrated in the crabs’ viscera. Just not their usual menu item, the Dungeness Crab. Detwiler says no, since this appears to be a localized incident, but he stresses that the warning can impact anyone who eats crabs – not just Californians.

“You know there is always frozen, from, you know, last year’s season, but everyone that is into crabs, they’re going to want the fresh crabs”, DiGirolamo said about his backup plan. “All our buyers canceled their orders”.

The toxin is linked to a vast algae bloom off the West Coast – which has seen unusually warm ocean temperatures as a result of El Nino, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.