Doesn’t get fresher than this: Live crabs from seafood purveyor at Point Ruston, port

Drive around the Port of Tacoma these days and you might notice a new flag waving as you turn the last bend headed north to Browns Point.

The curious will make the sudden turn into the parking lot of Fathom Seafood, an otherwise nondescript warehouse off Marine View Drive. On this day, a standard pop-up tent with two gray commercial tubs offers you a surprisingly rare treasure: live Dungeness crab, pulled straight from the waters of Puget Sound.

“We had to devise a way to make this small little tank — make it look nice,” said Cody Mills, Fathom’s CEO and president.

If you’re lucky, there will also be a mysterious man in a crab suit.

Yes, a crab mascot. A crabscot?

Employees — from those who handle the crustaceans from tank to shipment, to administrative staff who still find ways to get their hands dirty daily — take turns manning the pop-up shop. After the early days (March 2020) of this project, they started volunteering, eager to interact with the public. Friday through Sunday, one of them sets up a similar stand at The Public Market at Point Ruston, where Fathom began vending in July.

The first Friday was terrible, laughed Mills, with few customers visiting the still-under-construction venue in only its second week open. Traffic barely improved Saturday, but as crowds swarmed for the farmers market on Sunday, they had proof of concept.

“The education to the public is really cool, to see their reactions,” said Nick Mareno, Fathom’s lead crab purchaser. He works with farmers and fishermen throughout the region to source the meatiest Dungeness crabs.

Now, along with operations lead Solomon Fowler and business manager Matthew Wei, he is also a customer service specialist.

Those interactions with real people who take the product back to their home, versus sending the crabs anonymously across the Pacific Ocean, has boosted morale, said Mills.

“The sheer surprise when they walk up to the tank and see live crabs,” said Mills.

The U.S. has invested heavily in lobster, developing regulations and resources to pack and ship the live creature across the country and around the world.

The lowly crab, it seems, has been left in the water.

“The true flavor of the crab has been lost,” lamented Mills.

Sure, “fresh” crabs are cheaper, but they always risk being chewy and rubbery. When recooked, the meat tightens. If improperly handled at any point in the process, it turns blue and gray.

The difference between the former and the Fathom, said Mills, is “mind-boggling.”

LIVE SEAFOOD COMES HOME TO WASHINGTON

Dungeness crab, named after the sandy spit on the Olympic Peninsula’s northern coast, makes its home along the shores of California north to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

In Washington state, the season runs from Dec. 1 to Sept. 15, leaving the fall free for molting — when the crabs shed their shells to grow into bigger ones. According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, harvests of mature male crabs — catching females is prohibited — fluctuate based on oceanic conditions, peaking around 25 million pounds from 228 licensed fisheries, including many tribal-owned.

It’s a $60 million industry ($170 million in the broader Pacific Northwest, according to a 2014 report by the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission) but the live slice of it has largely left for international consumption, predominantly to China. The Chinese revere the Dungeness, the Fathom crew said, in part for its flavor and for its year-round availability. The season for native species, such as the hairy crab (also known as a Chinese mitten crab) and flower crab (a Singaporean specialty), is short and unstable, according to Wei. They’re also difficult to crack and aren’t nearly as dense.

“You just get continuity of supply, versus a tidal wave that stops,” he said.

When China went offline in January, in those early, bewildering stages of the coronavirus, Fathom — which had just upgraded its facility to process crab — lost its majority buyer.

COVID-19 walloped companies like theirs, which sold upwards of 90 percent of their product in Asia. Maybe 5 percent usually lands domestically, on high-end restaurant menus, explained Mills.

As it goes, the Tacoma-based business had already been suffering due to the trade war, as tariffs imposed by the Chinese government in retaliation for U.S. measures nearly ruined its longstanding foothold in the wild geoduck market.

In December, Mills told The News Tribune’s Matt Driscoll he couldn’t sleep.

“I stay awake at night, every night to be honest, thinking about this,” he said as 2019 came to a close. “It’s an emotional, personal answer. Do I think my business is at risk? I do. And I’ve given this thing everything I have. That’s a tough place to be.”

By March, after laying off nearly three-quarters of its staff, Fathom (known as Alaska Ice Seafoods in the geoduck trade) needed desperately to find a solution.

“We could have found other global markets for live seafood, but I wanted to bring it home,” he said. “COVID is forcing us to change.”

The pop-up stand outside the state-of-the-art port facility was Step 1.

“We really had no choice but to try new things,” continued Mills, adding that Fathom had laid the groundwork for direct-to-consumer ecommerce sales last year but pulled off the gas, thinking it best to stay in their lane.

Yet here they are, selling not just Dungeness to consumers but also Manila clams and Puget Sound oysters. Just this summer, they added tanks to hold Maine lobsters as part of this grand pivot to adjust with the times. (No geoducks yet.)

The last leg of Marine View Drive might seem off the beaten path for a store, but plenty of people travel around the port, whether coming and going from Browns Point or skipping Interstate 5 to reach Federal Way, said the Fathom team. Word spread. The flag waved. Customers returned.

As I was leaving the port facility on a recent Friday around noon, two customers pulled into the parking lot, hopped out of their cars and bought a few wriggling Dungeness crabs, their main claws wrapped by a thick rubber band.

At Point Ruston, sales have slowly gathered steam as customers see Fathom there once and return the next day or the following week, prepared to take that live crab home.

You shouldn’t keep any crab, frozen or not, for more than a day before consuming it. The live ones, of course, must be enjoyed straight away.

Fortunately, the best preparation is also the simplest: boil it, plop it into an ice bath and eat it cold. The meat is sweet enough, like lobster, that it doesn’t need butter, but it’s delicious warm that way, too.

Soon, Fathom plans to expand its retail store online, using UPS next-day delivery to ship live seafood with accompanying recipes and shopping guides.

“I can ship boxes to China,” said Mills, “so I can definitely ship to your home.”

FATHOM SEAFOOD

▪ 1690 Marine View Dr., Suite. C, Tacoma, 253-460-1720, fathomseafood.com

▪ Port Farmstand: Friday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

▪ Point Ruston: The Public Market, Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.