Caution for California crab lovers

A nasty little algae has been blooming like crazy lately (thanks, global warming!) and it's having some pretty serious consequences for Dungeness-loving consumers in California. The diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia sp., produces domoic acid, and at the high productivity rate it's experiencing because of warmer ocean conditions, the domoic acid is startin' trouble. When consumed at high concentrations, domoic acid can cause seizures, comas, and death! Yikes! It also causes short-term memory loss, so when people (or animals) get it from eating shellfish, it's known as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. (Remember learning about Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning here?) The domoic acid bioaccumulates in filter feeders like clams, mussels, and crabs (!!!) who just want to munch on some phytoplankton.

"Lay off me, I'm starving!" - Metacarcinus magister (PC Brian Feulner)

Speaking of crabs, California has closed its recreational and commercial crab seasons for both Dungeness and rock crabs because of this domoic acid contamination! This closure not only affects consumers (in a good way, really, because DEATH), but also the fishermen themselves who rely on these crabs for their livelihood. So it's kinda a lose-lose situation at the moment: fishermen lose money and their ability to pay their bills-bills-bills, or consumers run the risk of short-term memory loss, paralysis, and death.

This is the algae producing the acid that has halted #dungeness crab season. Here come the researchers… pic.twitter.com/1RcddYyj4C

— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) November 10, 2015

How realistic is this concern? Well, dead sea otters have been reported with domoic acid in their systems, several large whales have washed up dead and the toxic diatom is a suspect (PS, the dog in the 3rd picture is adorable!), and even this little sea lion pup was poisoned in utero:

little Danzig in recovery, lucky guy! (PC Paul Chinn, The Chronicle)

Cuteness aside, it's an issue that needs to be monitored, and all my dungie-loving people out there should remain cautious about where your crab were caught and how they were prepared!

Summer means Dungie-eating season!

It has been super sunny in Juneau which means two things: little work is actually being accomplished and lots of fish and crabs are being caught! One of my favorite recipes I learned last year is

Pasta with Vodka Crab Sauce

This is so easy and amazingly addictive. I start by wrangling my ingredients:

Pasta - I like penne with this, but I'm sure any will do
1 cup Dungeness crab meat (or more!)
1 jar vodka sauce, or make your own
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 roma tomato, diced
Parmesan cheese for topping

(the wine in your Snow Crab Love mug is optional)

First I get my pasta going: bring salted water to boil and throw the pasta in!

Next I like to saute the garlic in about 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Once it gets nice and translucent, I add the vodka sauce.

I wait to throw my crab meat and diced tomato in until the very end because I don't want the crab meat to get over cooked and the fresh tomato gives a nice contrast to the smooth sauce. What I like to do is drain the pasta once it's cooked, add the crab and tomato to the sauce, then toss the pasta in the sauce.

I serve the pasta immediately and like to top it with a healthy amount of Parmesan cheese. I have yet to snap a photo before eating it, but it looks something like this:

(from here)

Try it out and let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Change it up and make it your own:

I use a vodka sauce most of the time, but I've also tried this with a sun-dried tomato alfredo sauce which was super tasty!

Have you ever had garlic scapes? Holy buckets, my friends, they're good! I sliced up a couple scapes similar to the way you might cut up scallions and threw those into a batch instead of my minced garlic. The result was a mild garlic flavor with a fun fresh crunch that really livened up my pasta.

Do I think this would be great with cheese tortellini? Yes! How about ravioli? Why not!?!

Dungeness crabs rock!

I couldn't come up with a good title for this post because I'm just too full of Dungie crab goodness to think. But I have some pictures of a recent outing with some friends and I thought I'd share some tidbits of information with you about the Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) fishery.

SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD!

The personal use fishery is open all year round in Southeast Alaska, which means you can catch Dungies in the winter, spring, summer, or fall! All you have to do is call go out crabbing. (Sorry, I got stuck in a James Taylor song.)

enjoying a sunny summer Juneau day

The 2010 commercial fishery landed 3.569 million pounds of Dungeness crab in Southeast AK, with an exvessel price (in Juneau) of $1.75 per pound (it was $1.71 in Petersburg and Wrangell).

the mighty claw: both strong and tasty

Southeast Alaskans aren't the only predators getting in on this crab action: otters, sea lions, and even the occasional sculpin will feast on the crabs:

Sean holding a crab claw piece taken from the stomach of a sculpin we caught

(totally NOT from one of the crabs we'd just eaten...) 

I hope you learned a little (laughed a little?) and, if you're in Southeast with a crab permit, will enjoy these guys from the proper areas and at the proper size (6.5 inch carapace width). Thanks! And thanks again, guys, for all the Dungeness crabs!

crab pots and mountains: perfect Southeast view!

How to prepare and cook Dungeness crab

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is a health concern with symptoms of numbness or tingling of the face, arms, and legs, dizziness, nausea, and, in severe cases, death. It's pretty prevalent in Southeast Alaska and you can get it from eating clams and mussels that have bioaccumulated neurotoxins produced by the microalgae Alexandrium sp. The neurotoxins don't lose potency just from freezing the meat or cooking it.

incidents of PSP, showing why people stick to the

'R' months when harvesting bivalves

Neurotoxins are also accumulated in crabs, although they're only found in crab viscera ("innards") and not the meat. This is why it's important to know how to properly prepare your Dungies before cooking and eating them. (Read more about PSP in Dungeness crabs Metacarcinus magister here.)

a lovely Dungeness crab complete with barnacle accessory!

The basic steps to properly, quickly, and safely killing and cleaning your Dungeness crabs are to:

1. Crack off the top of their carapace quickly. You can even see a depiction of this step by famed Alaskan artist Rie Muñoz here.

2. Clean out their internal organs - this is what kills them almost instantly because it quickly removes their heart and nerves (remember learning about crustacean nervous systems from this post?), and by removing their hepatopancreas and other innards you are removing your risk of PSP!

3. Crack the dead crab in half, leaving one claw and four legs on each half. Now you're ready to boil 'em for 5 -7 minutes!

perfectly cleaned, halved, and cooked

For a video, you can click on this link. It's a bit crude, but it shows how the guy can get the job done quickly. The crabs' legs twitch a bit after the fact, but that's just like how human bodies will twitch after they're dead sometimes, so even though in the comments section someone is complaining about the crab being alive after being gutted and halved, that's just not true.

ready to crack into!

I've seen videos and articles on boiling the crabs whole, and even heard a rant from Gordon Ramsay (on MasterChef) on the "inhumane" way of killing crabs by quickly splitting them in half rather than boiling them alive, but this is the best way to do it if you don't want to risk getting PSP.

don't worry, Gordon, I'm still a fan

Luckily for us, researchers are working on a PSP monitoring program to detect the two main players in Alaska, Alexandrium fundyense and A. ostenfeldii, by developing a quantitative molecular assay which can tell not only presence or absence, but also level of toxicity (I learned about it at the 2012 Alaska Marine Science Symposium). 

If you're not into killing your own crabs, no worries - canned crab is just fine, especially if it's not Dungie season in your area. Just promise me you won't use fake krab meat for anything other than a California roll. Remember, that stuff is surimi (mostly ground pollock).

OK, OK, even after observing pollock offloads at the 

Alyeska Plant in Dutch Harbor, I'll still eat this stuff!

So, now that you have your crab meat ready, have fun cooking any of these recipes:

Amalga crab cakes
Crab apple salad
Creamy crab and pepper spread

I'm going to post a couple recipes next week in preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, so keep an eye out for that too!