Alaskan king crab legs

Years ago Connie and I used to love to find a restaurant that had GOOD Alaskan king crab legs. They were always a bit pricey, but heck not THAT expensive, and usually well worth the money spent.

Quite honestly, Connie and I haven't had king crab since the Japanese Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. I looked at the Pacific sea currents and from what I saw, the radioactivity in the water from Japan would be running directly up into Alaskan waters. Maybe a non issue, but maybe it would be. I figured caution was in order

A couple of weeks ago I was at MyWay Seafood Market and one of the guys there asked me if I liked snow crab. I told him it was OK, but I MUCH preferred the Alaskan king crab legs. He said he had never tasted king crab.

I knew that Sam's Club used to carry king crab legs in their seafood department, so today after I left my dentist appointment, I swung by the local Sam's with the intention of picking up some to take down to the market to share with the guys there. But heck, all they had was snow crab, so so much for that idea.

I figured I would check around online to see if I could find a decent source that way.

I am surprised that my eyeballs didn't pop out of my head when I saw the prices on those king crab legs now. Between $60 and $100 per pound! I will post a pic I captured down below, so do the math. Each king crab leg would be weighing close to 1 lb each. Which a goodly proportion of is the shell, which you just throw away. So figure on EACH LEG costing about twice as much per pound of edible meat. So basically you would be paying $120 to $200 PER POUND of Alaskan king crab meat!

Man, thanks, but NO thanks! No wonder Sam's Club wasn't carrying king crab any longer. They probably couldn't move it at those prices. And quite honestly, at those prices, I will certainly never be eating king crab again in my lifetime, much less giving any away to friends.

Not sure that inflation can account for such a price increase, so perhaps the wild stock isn't what it used to be. Maybe caused by the radioactivity?

Beats me, but as far as I am concerned, that stuff has been priced right out of my market.

That's crazy. Maybe you could eat lobster and tell everyone that you're being frugal.

It looks like king crab stocks are low (at least in certain places), and snow crab is able to be harvested in higher amounts:

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/10/18/...ce-challenges/

Kind of scary how fragile some stocks of wild species we use for food are.

Snow crab prices will probably go up quite a bit next year also due to warming.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2023/10/28/second-snow-crab-season-canceled-as-researchers-pinpoint-cause/#:~:text=This%20year's%20survey%20remained%20below ,years%20to%20recover%2C%20Szuwalski%20said.