Crab fishermen work on crab gear in a shop near Charleston on Monday afternoon. Crabbers are waiting to hear if crab will be harvestable by opening day Dec. 1. From left, Chris Hanson and Captain Jimmie Burns III, both of Coos Bay, knit wire on the crab pots. Both work on the F/V Footloose. World Photo by Madeline Steege

Fishermen and processors are gearing up for another Dungeness crab season but whether this one will top last year’s 33.6-million-pound record in Oregon is anyone’s guess.

All three West Coast states have been testing crab for quality — whether the crab is still in a softshell condition — and for domoic acid content to determine whether the season can open on time. Last year, fishermen in northern Oregon and Washington couldn’t begin fishing until after Jan. 1, after the holidays and after the price per pound dropped a few cents.

In many areas, the crab still is in a condition with a quality below the threshold allowed for opening the season on Dec. 1. Crab must meet a recovery rate — a ratio of the weight of meat picked from a crab to its total weight — of at least 23 percent for areas north of Cascade Head on the northern Oregon coast and in Washington and 25 percent south of Cascade Head.

As of Nov. 2, Washington’s crab at Westport and Long Beach resulted in a recovery rate of 22.1 percent and 20.1 percent, respectively.

Oregon testing did not fare so well. Crab in Astoria tested at 18.2 percent; Newport and Coos Bay both tested at between 20 and 21 percent. Port Orford and Brookings areas were very low — at 15.3 and 14.3 percent — but according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife memo, the first Port Orford results won’t be used for decisions about opening the season. The results were incomplete, from only shallow depths.

“As soon as weather permits, a new, complete test will be conducted for this area and those results will be considered as the first sample for this area for season opening decisions,” the memo said.

Preliminary results from Northern California, where meat pick-out rates also have to be at 25 percent or greater, ranged between 19.8 and 23.8 percent, according to an interim report from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Buyers remain hopeful, but that doesn’t mean fishermen and processors will be rolling in dough. This year, fuel prices will take a big chunk out of the profits.

“Everybody’s going to get less money this year,” California-based Carvalho Fisheries owner Bill Carvalho predicted in October. “Costs are up and commodity prices aren’t increasing.”

Yet Carvalho, who plans to buy at locations in Oregon again, still expects another year with decent volume.

“Not a record,” Carvalho cautioned. “You can’t have that every year.”

Processors were inundated with so much Dungeness in December last year, that many limited their boats to deliveries of only a few thousand pounds apiece until the first few weeks of the season were out of the way. Processing crews worked nearly round-the-clock to clean or section the crab and freeze it.