The start of stone crab season reveals the vulnerability of a local commercial fishing industry devastated by Hurricane Ian.  

While the first traps were pulled from the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday for the annual Oct. 15 start of the most-anticipated seafood season, many local fish markets remain offline because of hurricane damage.  

Casey Streeter’s Island Seafood Co. locations on Matlacha and Sanibel are still closed after being seriously damaged by Ian, so his local fish markets are missing much more than stone crab season. “Our fish market there in Matlacha got wiped out, pretty hammered,” Streeter said. “In all reality, our infrastructure’s gone. We took a major hit.”  

Oct. 15, of course, should have been the start date for the local commercial fishing season.  

“We work all year to hit these seasonal marks,” Streeter said. “The 15th, when stone crab season kicks off, is usually a transition. You see people show up. They want to have stone crabs. They want to have some fish. They want to enjoy some of the things we produce here locally. That’s not a reality right now.”  

Although his businesses are disabled, Streeter doesn’t plan to sit idle during this lucrative season. “We want to turn it back on. We’re ready,” he said. “I’ve got a mobile truck we’re going to get turned on in my parking lot here in the next hopefully month or two months or whatever, hopefully for the holidays, to try to save some business. It’s a mobile truck that went and sold product at farmers’ markets. I got it off the island before the storm. It’s at my brother-in-law’s house. I’m glad I did that because it’s the only thing we have left to sell fish out of.” 

Streeter was able to move two of his four fishing vessels down to Goodland, a fishing community near Marco Island in southern Collier County. “They rode the storm out here but there’s no place to keep boats tied up right now. So, they moved down to Kirk’s Seafood down in Goodland. We were lucky enough that they said, hey, we’ve got some dock space for boats.”  

Kirk Fish Co. on Buzzard’s Bay in Goodland survived the storm and was able to open last weekend as it does every year on Oct. 15. Kirk, which sells stone crabs, blue crabs, shrimp and fish is open only during stone crab season.  

“We actually come and go only with the stone crab season, which is Oct. 15 to May 1 now,” said Pat Kirk, who married into the Kirk family 34 years ago, joining a local seafood business her husband’s family started in the early 1950s.   

“Last year, [Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission] took two weeks away from the ending of our season,” said Kirk, noting that stone crab season used to extend until May 15. “We’re going to try to ask for it back so maybe they’ll give it back to us. It’s an important thing because the guys only make money for six months out of the year so two weeks is a big difference for us. There’s still a lot of people here who still want stone crabs up until about Mother’s Day. So, May 15 is usually a pretty good time because we leave the crabs alone to make babies all summer and it would be nice if we get our two weeks back. It would help out, especially after this devastation because a lot of people are in a lot worse shape than we are. We flooded, of course, here but our building is made of concrete, not drywall, so we’re used to hosing her out anyway. That’s what we do here.”  

Kirk’s business had about 3 feet of water inside from the storm surge, which is about the same amount of flooding the business received during Hurricane Irma five years ago. “Things floated away but everybody’s found things. Our boats are fine. Our pilings all set well,” she said. “It wasn’t a huge wind, thank goodness. It was just a huge tide. Everybody sat well here. Things floated away but we found most everything.” 

Kirk tries to buy only stainless-steel or galvanized equipment because of the inevitability of saltwater intrusion on the coast. Three pieces of flooded equipment were able to be saved after they were hosed off with freshwater and coated with WD-40, a common water-displacing formula. They needed new parts for a couple of refrigeration units. 

“We deal with Mother Nature on a daily basis,” Kirk said. “We are a little bit more prepared than most people. It is our business, working with the water and the tide and the moon. Thank goodness we didn’t have our gear in the water. We were lucky.”  

Kirk deployed crab traps on Oct. 5, the first day FWC permits the industry to do so. “We’re not allowed to put them in the water until the 5th.” she said. “We’re not allowed to pull them until (Oct. 15) at daylight.”  

Combs Fish Co. and its adjacent Kelly’s Fish House Dining Room are in the same boat. They were able to place their crab traps baited with pig’s feet on Oct. 5 and start pulling them out Oct. 15.  

Stone crab season is important to the bottom line for Combs and Kelly’s, which will mark their 70th anniversary next month, said Keith Ellis, the son of owner Kelly Ellis. “Stone crabs are a major seller for sure,” he said. “I don’t know the actual percentage of what the gross is off stone crabs compared to everything else but I do know that it is one of our major selling points because we are the only restaurant with our own fleet and the only fish house left in Naples.”  

Unfortunately, during Ian, the waterfront restaurant got more water than expected from the Gordon River, which connects to Naples Bay and the Gulf. “We got 40 inches,” Ellis said. “It surprisingly wasn’t as bad as other people got, especially since we were on the water. You’d think we would have gotten it worse, but I guess they built it up high enough that we were actually a little bit better than I thought we would have been. We had 40,000 pounds of pig’s feet in our freezer and as soon as I saw the water coming up, I’m thinking, oh, my god, what do you do with 40,000 pounds of rotten bait? Luckily, the water level stopped right below that freezer because that freezer’s up higher. It secured our bait. We are super fortunate for that.” 

While Kelly’s restaurant is working to reopen in early November, stone crabs are available both wholesale and retail from the dock of the adjacent seafood company. “Combs Fish Co. buys all the stone crabs and then we sell stone crabs to Kelly’s Fish House ” Ellis said. “It’s all the same owner but Combs is the actual fish house.”  

Most of Combs’ crabs are sold wholesale. “We sell to Wynn’s Market. We sell to Dilly’s Seafood sometimes. We sell to smaller places,” Ellis said, noting that restaurants are not really his target business. “Most restaurants will take like 20 to 50 pounds. I’m trying to move 1,000 pounds.”   

Stone crab season also is big business for Phelan Family Brands, a restaurant group that operates Pinchers, Deep Lagoon Seafood, Two Fillets and The Bay House. Stone crabs are available now at those Gulf Coast restaurants. The Oct. 15 start of season also marked the 25th anniversary of Pinchers, which the Phelan family started in Bonita Springs.   

It’s not exactly the best time for celebration, though, for Phelan, which still has a few restaurants offline since Ian, including the Pinchers on Fort Myers Beach that was demolished by the hurricane. “We lost Pinchers Beach Bar & Grill (at the Wyndham Garden Hotel on Fort Myers Beach). That one’s going to be gone forever it looks like,” said CEO Grant Phelan, who said the Pinchers on San Carlos Boulevard on the other side of the bridge also took a severe pounding in the storm and remains closed for now. Pinchers locations at The Marina at Edison Ford in Fort Myers and Tin City in Naples also are still temporarily closed because of storm damage.  

Phelan’s Island Crab Co. in St. James City had some roof damage from Ian but it survived the storm and already has boats out pulling stone crab traps. Phelan, though, echoes others in the local seafood industry when asked to give a prediction on this year’s stone crab season haul. “Too early to tell,” he said. “I know there’s life out there. They’re seeing some crabs, so that’s good.” 

The crabs are there, said Tim “Dilly” Dillingham, who owns Dilly’s Fish Co., but that’s only part of the equation. “I don’t foresee anything crazy as far as not catching crab,” said Dillingham, who is a silent partner of a stone crab boat with his brother. “There’s a couple of problems I think will come into the mix. One, there’s a lot of debris out there. And, we have lost a lot of restaurants. La Playa (in North Naples) was one of my biggest restaurants and they took crab every single week off of me. So, they’re going to be closed down until December or January at least.”   

Mike’s Bait House, where Dilly’s sells fresh seafood on Fridays also has been temporarily out of commission after taking on about 4 feet of flood water. Nevertheless, Dillingham hopes to be back at that East Naples location selling off of the back of his truck by this Friday or next. “Hopefully with stone crabs as long as the season goes at it has in the past,” he said.  

Kirk Fish Co. sells to fish markets in Naples such as Swan River Seafood and Captain & Krewe Seafood Market & Raw Bar, which took over Kirk’s former retail market years ago across from Cambier Park. Captain & Krewe, though, has not reopened yet since the hurricane. Kirk also sells to places on Pine Island, the east coast of Florida and in the Keys.  

“I could sell to people all over the world if I had enough crabs to sell to them, but I don’t have that many fishermen,” Kirk said.  

Kirk also does a good deal of business in the wholesale market for stone crabs. “I really don’t know how many pounds we’re going to go through but we might push 50,000 pounds through in a season,” Kirk said. “We’re the processors, so every evening they come in, we have to cook them, we chill them and we chill them overnight in the cooler. Then, the next day, we actually sort the sizes–it’s called grading–so we literally touch every crab claw and weigh them and box them up into 50-pound increments and then we sell them to a few different wholesalers.”  

Kirk has been working this way for many decades. “This year, everybody in the world’s been calling us. So, there’s a big demand,” she said. “Stone crabs are a local delicacy. It’s like going to Maine and having a Maine lobster.”  

And the local stone crabs are considered the best. “This actual species is indigenous to just the Gulf from what the biologists say. There are a few different stone crabs that come from the Bahamas and what not but it’s not the exact same species. Ours are a local delicacy and we look forward to seeing our customers as they look forward to getting their stone crabs, for sure. We offer to crack them for no charge and all they’ve got to do is go home and pick the shell off and dunk them in our great mustard sauce that we make, and enjoy them. It’s a really easy meal and it’s an absolute delicacy.”  

Chilled claws are traditionally dipped in a zesty mayo-based sauce flavored with mustard and other ingredients, but they also can be served warm with drawn butter. “I like them both ways,” Kirk said. “I like them straight out of the cooker hot, but I don’t put anything on them then. They’re just absolutely to die for.”   

Because stone crabs regenerate their claws, they are uniquely sustainable. “It’s a renewable resource,” Kirk said. “There isn’t a lot of meat in the body of a crab so there’s no sense in taking the crab. We break off the claw that’s legal size and throw her back.”  

Both claws of a stone crab may be harvested if the claws are of legal size, at least 2-7/8 inches each. Although it is lawful to harvest both of a stone crab’s claws, this practice leaves the stone crab with few alternatives to defend itself from predators, FWC reports, noting that leaving one claw allows crabs to obtain greater amounts of food, providing more energy to molt and grow lost claws.  

Stone crabs quickly grow back their claws. “We’ve actually had them in a saltwater tank here and watched them grow back their claw. Within 30 days, there’s a little teeny claw that pops right back out again. It is incredible,” Kirk said.  

Florida’s stone crab season in state and federal waters will end on May 2, with the last day of harvest being May 1. Commercially harvested stone crab claws may be possessed and sold during the closed season but only if they have been placed in inventory prior to May 2 by a licensed wholesale or retail dealer, according to the FWC.