Fuel costs squeeze Nature Coast stone crab season, Citrus County operators say

A statewide season, a shared cost problem

Florida’s stone crab season opened Oct. 15, the same date that governs harvest from Cedar Key south through Citrus County. Reporting from WUFT News out of Crystal River shows what that opening has looked like on the ground this year, and the pressures described there, fuel costs eating into margins before a single claw reaches a cooler, are not confined to Citrus County waters. Any Nature Coast operation running boats under the same statewide rules faces the same fuel market.

At The Crab Plant in Crystal River, the work of preparing for the season started months before Oct. 15, with crews hauling boats, repairing traps and maintaining gear through the summer, costs paid out well before the first catch came in. Kelly Kofmehl, who has worked in the stone crab trade since 1988, said this year’s start has been “decent,” with slightly higher production and larger crabs than last year. But he was direct about what’s changed: “Everything we do is more expensive,” he said, naming fuel as one of the business’s biggest pressures.

Squeezed margins, not higher prices

Rather than pass those costs to customers, The Crab Plant has held retail prices at last year’s levels and is instead trying to run more efficiently, a choice that puts the cost burden further down the chain, on the water.

That’s where it lands hardest. Michelle “Shelly” Smith, co-owner of Shelly’s Seafood Market, said her business pays fishermen only what the market will bear, and when fuel and other costs rise without a matching rise in the price of claws, fishermen absorb the difference. “They make less,” Smith said. “We try to pay as much as we can, but it can’t be more than market price.” Smith said stone crab prices can shift daily or weekly with supply and demand, leaving little room to cover higher operating costs when the market doesn’t move.

Karri Holliday, co-owner of Aripeka Stone Crab Company, described her season’s start as average, pointing to the same combination of higher fuel costs and softer consumer spending. She noted that early-season catches are usually strong because crabs have rested over the summer, but this year’s opening weeks have run slower than typical.

Weather, the other variable

Weather cuts both ways in the fishery. Smith said strong easterly winds kept boats in her area off the water for several days during the season’s second week, lost fishing time that doesn’t come back. Kofmehl, by contrast, said a hurricane that passed offshore while his crews were setting traps stirred up the water in a way that helped move crabs into position, aiding the catch.

What it means for this coast

Florida’s stone crab fishery works the same way wherever it’s harvested, fishermen take only the claws that meet legal size and return the crab alive to regrow them, which means the cost structure described in Citrus County applies directly to boats working out of Cedar Key and other Levy County landings under the same Oct. 15 opening. Fuel prices, trap maintenance and seasonal prep costs are not local quirks; they’re inputs shared across the Nature Coast fleet. Winter matters most for businesses like The Crab Plant, which count on seasonal visitors to Florida to move product through the colder months, a pattern that holds for Cedar Key’s own seafood retailers as the season moves toward its heaviest demand period.

No state agency action or rule change is tied to this story; it’s a market and cost snapshot at the season’s start, drawn from on-the-record interviews with three Citrus County operators.