Newport Registers Title of “Dungeness Crab Capitol of the World”

The highest years yield ever recorded in Oregon was 33.6 million pounds in 2004 – 05.

(NEWPORT, Ore. ) - With record numbers of commercial crabbing tonnage coming in, and some of the most opportunities for public crabbing on the entire Oregon coast, Newport is taking it up a notch by officially calling itself “Dungeness Crab Capitol of the World.”

The new phrase is a registered trademark for the town, and has a wide variety of marketing possibilities for tourism and commerce.

“We have been tagging ourselves as just that for years,” said Lorna Davis, Director of Tourism Development for the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce. “We felt it was time to make it officially ours by registering the trademark. The possibilities are endless for marketing. We’ve already started using it in press and on our website.”

Davis said Newport easily deserves the slogan. With Yaquina Bay as large as it is, this leaves plenty of room for crabbing from public docks along the Bayfront District, the South Beach area, as well as from a variety of charter boat cruises that skirt the bay.

“It is a fun and popular recreation that people have enjoyed for a long time. With public docks to crab from, boats to rent, or great marina’s to put your own boat in the bay from, it makes it easy for anyone who puts in a little effort into it to participate in. Observing is an easy sport as well.”

But the real ammo behind the phrase is the enormous yields of commercial crabs the port in Yaquina Bay brings in each year.

Newport has had the most crab landings of all of the Oregon coast in the last three years, according to Gene Law, Newport’s commissioner in the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

During the recent high-yield years that have broken all records, Newport’s port continually came in with the most in Oregon.

The highest years yield ever recorded in Oregon was 33.6 million pounds in 2004 – 05, while the 2005 – 06 season yielded a whopping 27.6 million pounds of crab.

Normal years are around 10 or 11 million pounds, Law said, and this year is still exceptionally high at about 14 million pounds to date. During these record years, Newport consistently has the biggest hauls of crab.

The statistics are for commercial crabbers only, and do not include what the public may be getting out of Yaquina Bay.

The reasons for this are many, Law said. First, a variety of ocean conditions have come together to allow ideal crabbing conditions off the waters of the Oregon coast.

Secondly, marketing of Oregon’s crabbing industry is at its heaviest to date, allowing for record catches to sell in record numbers.

“Back in the 70’s it wasn’t so good,” Law said. “There weren’t the marketing conditions like there is now.” Law added improvements in transportation and roads have allowed for better selling conditions as well.

The Oregon Dungeness Crabbing Commission is responsible for much of that marketing, snagging buyers from around the country and the world, with an enormous Asian market.

Fishermen pay a certain fee to the commission, based on their catch, and those funds are in turn put towards attracting buyers to Oregon.

“A lot of what we bring in gets shipped live directly to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, many other U.S. cities - and a lot to China and Japan,” Law said. “There are also a lot of buyers from Canada. There is a huge amount of Asians that have moved to Vancouver, British Columbia from Hong Kong who consume a whole lot of crab. There is just a huge Asian market now, and they don’t care what it costs.”

There are four large processing companies in Newport which start shipping these crabs on their way in water tanks, moving the live crustaceans to their various destinations.

They are shipped by semi’s, especially north or south on I-5, or they are flown to their Asian destinations.

Law said there are a few smaller companies in Newport as well, and during that record season of 04 – 05, they altogether shipped or processed about 10 million pounds of crab.

Between the two marketing possibilities of tourism and the commercial crabbing industry, Davis said the new slogan could pack a powerful punch.

The tourism aspect of Newport may have much to gain with the ability to further promote crabbing off the town’s docks and from its fleet of cruisers.

“We estimate that somewhere between two to three million visitors come to Newport annually, and as many as four million on banner years,” Davis said. “You can certainly bet that many of them come for our marine sports opportunities and crabbing seems to be the most popular.”