BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) - Desporte Seafood has plenty of crawfish. It has plenty of shrimp, and it has plenty of fish.
What the Biloxi market doesn’t have much of is crab, and what is for sale is very expensive, just like it is all over the region.
“This year is probably the highest I’ve ever seen crab meat,” said owner Sean Desporte.
Regular lump blue crab is at $34 a pound, and jumbo lump crab at $43 a pound. That’s about $10 higher than the Venezuelan blue crab that owner Sean Desporte has added to the stock.
The reason?
“Cold rain, and it’s hard for the crabbers to get out,” Desporte said. “And even when they are getting out, they’re saying they’re having a hard time because of the wind. Yesterday, we had one of our crabbers go out and he usually comes in with a couple hundred pounds. He got 26 pounds of crabs.”
It has a domino effect.
“When they’re not catching the live crabs, the crab factories can’t pick crab meat. So, what’s happening is the local crab shops aren’t able to pick any crab meat, so, it drives the price up high.”
Dealers said they hope that once the weather gets better, the crabs will start coming in.
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