One Of The Pacific’s Mysteries: An Albino Dungeness Crab

A RARE OCCURRENCE: THE STORY BEHIND THIS ALL-WHITE CRAB

It’s not everyday that you’ll pull up a crab pot only to discover an all-white Dungeness Crab among the many brownish-purple colored crabs but last week off the coast of Anacortes in Washington State, one of Pacific Dream Seafood’s’ fishermen pulled one up. Some estimate that the occurrence of these rare species is one in five million. That’s right, pretty darn rare.

According to a previously published article from The Oregon Coast Aquarium, a shellfish biologist with Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife reports that “in Oregon we harvest between 15-20 million pounds of Dungeness a year,” said Groth. “Each adult crab averages about two pounds. That’s something like 8 million crabs annually. We receive reports of these anomalous individuals maybe two or three times a year, so the odds of finding them are quite low.”

It’s still a mystery to many how these all-white crabs manage to exist since they don’t have the brownish-purple colornation that camouflages them in the water to project against predators.

We’re in the process of contacting different Aquariums to see if they’re interested in keeping this unique crab. We’ll report shortly on how this story unfolds…stay tuned.