CHARLESTON – The ocean’s rough. The wind’s blowin’. The rain’s pounding the docks.

It’s crab season.

And it’s also evident by the number of commercial boats coming and going in the harbor that crabbers are delivering loads and loads of fresh Dungeness to processors.

“There’s a few crab around,” said Hallmark Fisheries Production Manager Scott Adams. “It depends on where you’re at.”

Fishermen were anxious prior to the start of the season on Monday. In Central California, where the season starts in mid-November, reports were grim. A few fishermen set their gear, made one haul, then brought their pots back to port. Only two or three crab per pot, between four and 10 pounds, were reported by fishermen hoping to make up for the lack of a salmon season.

In Oregon, catches are much better, Adams said. Some fishermen were getting 20 pounds of crab per pot, some 80 pounds. It seemed the northern areas produced more of the prized crustaceans than southern areas, he added, though Brookings, Crescent City, Calif., and Trinidad, Calif., fishermen were surprised by better numbers than they’d hoped.

By 3 p.m. Monday, more than half a dozen boats had already unloaded at Hallmark. Many were headed back out. Many smaller boats were unable to go fishing due to weather that kicked up late Sunday night and early Monday. The National Weather Service forecast seas up to about 16 feet with bigger breakers at the shoreline.

“They were 18 feet,” said fisherman Tyler Long.

Long, like several others, lost gear if it was inside of about 20 fathoms, or water 120 feet deep. Big seas can lift crab pots off the bottom, transfer them inshore or north or south or cover them with sand.

Crabbers often risk setting gear close to shore — it’s where most of the crab are. Sneaker waves can easily flip vessels.

Though that hasn’t happened so far this season, the 2008-09 crab season still is marred by the loss of two lives.

On Friday, while leaving the port of Garibaldi to set gear, the F/V Network capsized and broke in two on the jetty. The captain, Darrin Mobley, was able to swim to shore. The U.S. Coast Guard sent two 47-foot lifeboats and three helicopters to search for the other two crewmen, George Shaw, of  Sequim, Wash., and Timothy Leake, of Tillamook, but did not find them.

“It casts a pall over the start of the season,” Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, said.

Furman said part of the reason the state supervises price negotiations between fishermen and processors is for an orderly start to the season. In previous years, fishermen would negotiate with individual processors. If word got out that one processor was paying more for crab, some fishermen would rush out to get a jump on the competition.

This year, the industry settled on $1.60 a pound to crabbers, in force for seven days, giving fishermen in every Oregon port a level playing field. After seven days, traditional market conditions take over and processors can negotiate individually with their fleets.

“From our perspective, it takes some of the fun out of getting a price and getting crab in time for the holidays,” Furman said.

The reality, he added, is that sometimes the price for having crab in time for Christmas is paid for with men’s lives.

At Hallmark, while Long watched his crew unload the crab, Adams checked the product transferred to totes and ready to be cleaned and cooked.

“This one’s a little soft,” Adams said, pinching the leg of one crab. That softness meant the crab wasn’t quite as filled out as it should be.

But that was an anomaly. Most of the crab are stuffed with meat and ready for market.

“These crab are well fed,” Adams said. “These guys have to use different mixtures of bait to get these crab to bite. They’re nice crab.”