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SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco's quintessential meal is Dungeness crab, a glass of chardonnay and sourdough bread.
Like lobster in Maine or shrimp in the Gulf Coast states, Dungeness has become a symbol of this city's culinary delights. Its image is the logo for Fisherman's Wharf.
But now local crab fishermen and connoisseurs worry that one of the city's most beloved delicacies is in trouble, a victim of too many boats pulling up too many crabs all at once.
The anger reached the boiling point after a crush of fishing boats during the season's frenetic first week in mid November produced a Dungeness glut so big that fishermen say it led to the wholesale dumping of dead or dying crabs into San Francisco Bay. (The crabs are supposed to be alive when sold to restaurants and processors.)
For food lovers in the San Francisco area, the wasted catch means their chances of buying local Dungeness for the rest of the eight-month season are slim because most of the larger crabs that fall within the legal size limit are now gone.
"The people of the bay area need to be outraged because a lot of their winter crabs have been taken and wasted," said fisherman Larry Collins, vice president of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association. "The crabs are getting harvested too fast."
Many local crab fishermen said too many out-of-town crab boats bearing too many traps flooded the market all at once. Seafood processors could not handle the volume, and many crabs died aboard boats before they could be unloaded, they said.
The fishing frenzy has led to a renewed call for restrictions on the number of crab traps, or crab pots, allowed in the waters.
"If they restricted the fishing gear, the crabs would be harvested throughout the season, as opposed to just at the beginning," said Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.
The state can impose fines if it confirms that crabs were wasted. The fishermen have taken their complaints and video footage of the docks to the California Fish and Game Commission, which plans to gather more testimony on crab dumping and trap limits at its March meeting.
In the past, the San Francisco crab industry was dominated by small, local boats that carried up to 300 traps each. In recent years, a growing number of fishermen from northern California, Oregon and Washington have arrived with larger boats that can carry more than 1,000 traps.
Another reason for the influx of crab boats: The federal government bought out half the West Coast trawling fleet last year to save fish such as snapper and sole, and many of those fishermen used their government checks to buy new boats and join California's $35-million crab industry.
Despite the increased number of vessels, biologists at the state Department of Fish and Game said the crab population remains healthy because only the largest crabs are allowed to be taken. That allows younger ones to grow into next year's catch.
The state Legislature passed a bill imposing a 250-pot limit per vessel for two years, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Opponents said a 250-pot limit would not be fair to fishermen who have invested in large boats. If the fleet wants limits, they should be based on a boat's size, said Rod Moore of West Coast Seafood Processors, which urged the veto.