Two days before stone crab season opened, Orestes Cordero stood on the dock behind Keys Fisheries with a trap at his feet. The base was weighted with poured concrete. He has worked that dock for 11 years, first as a worker and now as an owner, and he fishes a small license of about 50 traps. A reporter from the Key West Citizen asked him how the business works, and he explained it in four sentences of Spanish.
"Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. When there's a lot, lots of product, little money. When there's little product, a higher price. You understand?"
The same thing happened upstairs. At Shannon's Crustacean Station, the tiki bar on top of Keys Fisheries on Gulfview Avenue, nobody would guess at an opening-day price. A Marathon claw doesn't have a price until the boats come back. The number gets set again from what was in the traps, how big the claws are and what it cost to go get them. That's also why claws show up when they do, both during the day and across the season.
Three Things Set the Price
The Citizen asked Shannon's manager Kathy Perez why the menu leaves stone crab without a number. She named three things:
- "How big is the Stone Crab"
- "How much is the pound"
- "The cost of the gas"
Bartender Lauren Barbush said the same thing more simply: "I have no idea what the price is. Especially with the cost of diesel and everything now."
Only one of those three is the crab. The pound rate moves with supply, the way Cordero described. Size matters because claws are sold in grades, and the grades are priced far apart. Diesel is the cost of running a crab boat, and it was still high at the opener this year.
You could see how far apart the grades are in the South Florida Sun Sentinel's opening-week report from Oct. 19, 2026. These are South Florida wholesale prices, not Marathon counter prices. Vinny Morris, a wholesaler who delivers to Broward and Palm Beach markets, was charging $22 a pound for mediums and $50 for colossals. At Triar Seafood in Hollywood, Peter Jarvis was charging $39 for mediums and $79 for colossals. He said that was about even with last season and that he thought it would be lower if not for "the frustrating cost of diesel." Jarvis also said where prices would go if the catch outran demand: "you'll see a butt ton go into the freezer."
So the same claw can more than double in price depending on its grade and who's selling it. That's before a Marathon counter adds the cost of cooking and chilling it.
This Year's Opener Leaned Toward "Mucho"
Cordero's rule says a big catch means a softer price, and the first reports from 2026 pointed that way. Morris gets his claws from Billy's Stone Crab, which runs fish houses in both Marathon and Summerland Key. He told the Sun Sentinel that when crabbers pulled traps on opening day, Oct. 15, they found bountiful hauls. That was a week after Hurricane Isaias hit the Gulf Coast. "The storm churned up the seas and moved crabs straight into the traps," he said.
The same report said the good catch was keeping prices flat with last season's opener. It also mentioned a short shortage of medium claws in the first days and diesel costs that hadn't come down. Those were regional observations, not numbers from Marathon's docks. Put together, a big catch pushes the pound price down, fuel keeps a floor under it, and if mediums run short, the cheapest grade at the counter is the one that disappears first.
The boats also cover a lot of water. Scott Dekle, vice president of Keys Fisheries, told the Citizen that crews leave the dock around 4 a.m. "If their traps are 30 miles away they'll leave here at 4 o'clock and they'll ride for two hours before they get to the first trap," he said. That's two hours of fuel burned before a single claw is in the boat.
Why Claws Show Up in the Afternoon
The long ride also explains the timing. Dekle said lobster, which is still in season, gets cooked first thing in the morning at Keys Fisheries. "The crab won't be till later in the day." He expected the tiki bar to fill up on opening afternoon with people holding claw hammers, "hoping and praying that we will have some fresh crab to come bring to them."
Brandon Geide of Keys Fresh Seafood on Stock Island described the same delay from farther down the chain. "Usually everybody gets in late on the 15th," he said, so his counter fills on the 16th, "because we got to cook them." Fresh stone crab claws are cooked before they're sold, so even a good haul takes time to reach the ice.
The Price Moves Over the Season Too
The daily swings Cordero described also add up to a seasonal pattern. Geide laid it out for the Citizen: "At the beginning of the season when it's more in need, the price is higher and then towards the end of season it drops down and around Christmas time it shoots back up." He also said prices hit an extreme peak during the pandemic years and are "slowly coming back to that normal."
That pattern comes from a Stock Island fish house, not from Marathon sales records. Still, the logic holds anywhere: holiday demand pushes the price up whatever the traps bring in. If you want claws for a holiday table, the opening weeks and late December are when demand is highest, and the weeks between have usually been calmer.
The 2020 Rules Behind the Supply
Some of the supply limits were set on purpose, by the industry and the state together. Dekle told the Citizen that crabbers sat down in structured meetings with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission staff because "our catch keeps going down." "This wasn't just FWC coming up with something on their own," he said.
| Change | What it does, as Dekle described it |
|---|---|
| Minimum claw raised by an eighth of an inch, to 2 7/8 inches | Leaves more claws on the crab. "An eighth of an inch doesn't sound like much." |
| Escape ring in the back of each trap | When a trap is hauled up, water pours through the ring "and a little small crab will go out with the water." |
| Two weeks cut from May | A state biologist told him that more than half of female crabs carry eggs in the first half of May. |
Dekle said scientists expected six to 10 years before the changes showed up in the catch. By his own rough math, he thought they would add crabs starting in the first year.
The fishery is a big part of Marathon's working waterfront. Keys Weekly, citing FWC, reported in November 2025 that the Keys produce 40% of Florida's stone crab harvest, about 2 million pounds a year on average. The same report called Keys Fisheries the largest stone crab claw processor in Florida.
For people who set their own traps, FWC's recreational stone crab page lists this season as Oct. 15 through May 1, closed May 2. It also covers the 2 7/8-inch minimum claw, the ban on taking claws from egg-bearing crabs, free trap registration for harvesters 16 and older, and the daily limit of one gallon per person or two gallons per vessel, whichever is less. FWC also asks anyone who finds a tagged crab to report the tag number, date and location to 786-492-0137 or [email protected] and leave the tagged claw on the crab. The agency has offered a $500 raffle prize for reporters, according to the Citizen.
Where Marathon Sells Claws This Season
Since the price is set daily, every counter below sells at market price. The useful habit is to call before you drive.
| Where | Address | What they offer | Before you go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keys Fisheries | 3502 Gulfview Ave. | Restaurant, seafood market and wholesale fishery; lists fresh and jumbo claws in season | Shannon's, the upstairs tiki bar, posts no fixed claw price |
| Keys Maritime Specialty Bait and Seafood Market | 890 15th St. Ocean, Lot 3 | Locally caught claws cooked in-house | Stock varies; the market says to call 305-393-4245 because prices move with market value |
| Fish Tales Market & Eatery | 11711 Overseas Hwy. | Fish house and retail seafood market advertising fresh stone crab | Retail claws; call about the day's supply |
| King Seafood Market & Restaurant | 10925 Overseas Hwy. | Restaurant and retail market with seasonal stone crab on the menu | Listed at market price |
From Key Colony Beach, all four are a short drive across the Sadowski Causeway. If you're comparing stops, remember Dekle's timeline. In Marathon, fresh claws usually reach the counter in the afternoon, not first thing in the morning.
Twenty-Five Claws Against the Clock
Each fall, Keys Fisheries holds its Stone Crab Eating Contest. This year's was scheduled for Oct. 31, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with entries at $75 for one person and $150 for a two-person team.
The rules are short. Each contestant cracks and eats 25 claws, picks them clean and takes a penalty for any meat left behind. At the 14th annual contest on Nov. 1, 2025, Keys Weekly reported that Jonathan Martinescu of Fort Myers won the individual title in 9 minutes, 46 seconds, using what he called "a lot bigger of a spoon." Marathon's Tom Zajac and Ryan Beckett won the team division in 6 minutes, 15 seconds. It was Zajac's third straight team win, after winning in 2023 and 2024 with another partner. Entry fees went to the Florida Keys Hope Walk.
The rest of the season runs on Dekle's clock. The boats leave Gulfview Avenue around 4 a.m., and nobody knows the day's catch, or the day's price, until the first trap comes up.
The FWC rules above are general information, not legal advice, so check the FWC page before you set a trap. If you're a Marathon neighbor and want to talk about life along the working waterfront, from Gulfview Avenue to the canals where the crab boats tie up, Jen Davis at Barefoot in the Keys is happy to help. Schedule a free consultation, and maybe bring your best claw-cracking tip.
