Stone Crab Season in Key West: Sizes, Prices and Local Counters

Florida's stone crab season opens Thursday, October 15, 2026, and runs through May 1, 2027. The first claws of the year will be in Key West seafood cases within days. How much a dinner costs depends mostly on the size grade, and much less on which counter sells it. Each grade comes from a fishery that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has tightened twice in six years. The money paid at the dock for those claws is now the subject of a federal criminal plea and two civil lawsuits.

The island's best sources are the counters closest to the boats. Here is how the season is set up, what the grades cost, and where to buy claws from Old Town to Stock Island.

A fishery managed one claw at a time

Stone crab is a claw fishery. The FWC recreational rules set a minimum claw length of 2 7/8 inches and a season that opens October 15 and closes after May 1. Those numbers have changed. Keys Weekly reported that in 2020, FWC raised the minimum claw length by 1/8 inch and cut two weeks from the season in response to falling landings.

The second change hit the traps. Beginning with the 2024-25 season, every plastic or wood trap must have an unobstructed escape ring of 2 3/16 inches set in a vertical outside wall. The rule applies to commercial and recreational traps alike. The ring lets smaller crabs out before anyone hauls the trap.

The Keys carry a large share of this fishery. In November 2025, Keys Weekly put the Keys at about 40 percent of Florida's stone crab harvest and cited FWC's estimate of roughly 2 million pounds a year statewide. A month later, the same paper said Keys waters account for about half of the statewide catch. The two estimates differ, but either way Key West sits in one of Florida's most important stone crab grounds. Keys Weekly also reported that spiny lobster and stone crab together were worth $76.3 million of the state's $240.5 million in wholesale seafood value in 2024, citing the Florida Department of Agriculture.

The size grade sets the price

Claws are sold by size grade, and the gap between grades is large. The best guides available before opening day are one local market's online prices and last year's opening-week wholesale prices:

On both lists, colossal costs a little more than twice as much as medium. The Keys Fresh figures are current web prices with no per-pound basis on the collection page, so they are not 2026 opening-day quotes. A phone call before driving over is the only reliable check. The 2025 numbers come from the Sun Sentinel's October 16, 2025 report. That report described strong first hauls from the Gulf Coast and the Keys, a shortage of medium claws, and a seller who said opening prices matched where the previous season had ended.

A short supply of mediums matters to anyone shopping for a family dinner. Medium is the most affordable grade, so when it runs short, the cheapest option in the case can move up a grade.

Where the claws land on this island

Key West's stone crab counters fall into two groups. Stock Island fish markets sit on the working waterfront. Restaurants and markets on Key West proper run their own supply or crack claws to order.

• Eaton Street Seafood Market, 801 Eaton St. This Old Town market keeps stone crab in its fish case and cracks claws for customers. Its posted menu lists stone crab artichoke dip at $14.95, stone crab chowder at $8.50 or $13.95, and claws at market price. The pages showing its hours are dated before 2026, so check opening times directly.
• The Stoned Crab, 3101 N. Roosevelt Blvd. The restaurant specializes in stone crab and says its two fishing boats bring in daily catches of stone crab and other local seafood. It closed for annual maintenance from September 13 through September 27, 2026, and reopened on Monday, September 28, in time for the season.
• Fishbusterz, 6406 Maloney Ave. This Stock Island fishery runs a retail seafood market that sells Florida stone crab. It is open Monday through Saturday and takes online orders.
• Keys Fresh Seafood Market, 6840 Front St. This Stock Island market is open daily and sells stone crab claws by grade, from medium up to mega-colossal.

All four are within a short drive of each other, and two of them are on Stock Island, where the island's commercial fishing still operates. A restaurant with its own boats and two fish markets on the working waterfront put Key West unusually close to the source of a fishery that most of the country only sees on a menu.

The dock price, now in federal court

The difference between what a crabber earns at the dock and what a claw costs at the counter is now a legal question. On September 16, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Dennis Dopico, vice president of the wholesaler D&D Seafood, had pleaded guilty to one felony count. The charge was conspiring to fix and suppress the prices his company paid for spiny lobster and stone crab claws. Keys Weekly reported that the conduct ran from 2023 to 2025 and involved about $8 million in commerce. Law360 reported on January 29, 2026, that the judge spared Dopico a prison sentence.

In October 2025, Keys fishermen filed two civil suits that reach back further. According to Keys Weekly, the suits claim that wholesalers began setting per-pound dock prices before the lobster and stone crab openers at least as early as June 2017. One of the filings describes the economics this way:

"This well-documented supply shortage should have resulted in record-high dockside prices for fishermen as a basic function of supply and demand."

The suit says the best claws reached as much as $50 a pound wholesale during periods of real competition. A local fisherman told Keys Weekly that dock prices were held between $10 and $20 a pound. These are the plaintiffs' allegations, not findings by any court.

Both civil cases are still open. In one, the court allowed document discovery to go forward in March 2026, with limits on materials from the criminal investigation. Its March 3 closure order was for administrative purposes only. In the other, defendants filed a motion to dismiss in January 2026 with no ruling on the docket. A status conference was set for April 20. The public docket listings reviewed for this post end in spring 2026.

This doesn't change the price in Eaton Street's case on opening week. It does explain why the 2026-27 season starts with more public attention on dock pricing than any season before it.

Setting your own traps this season

Anyone in Key West with a boat and a few traps can work the same calendar as the commercial fleet, under FWC's recreational rules. Counting from today:

1. Monday, October 5. This is the first day recreational traps may go in the water, 10 days before the opener. They cannot be tended until the season opens.
2. Before any trap goes in. Anyone 16 or older needs FWC's free recreational crab trap registration to use stone crab or blue crab traps. Plastic and wood traps need the 2 3/16-inch escape ring in a vertical outside wall.
3. Thursday, October 15. Traps may be pulled. Claws must measure at least 2 7/8 inches. The daily limit is one gallon of claws per person or two gallons per vessel, whichever is less.
4. May 1, 2027. This is the last day of the season. Harvest closes on May 2.

For trappers launching from the Lower Keys, Monroe County reopened the public bayside ramp at the end of Blimp Road on Cudjoe Key, at mile marker 21.2, this summer. It had been closed while it served as a staging area for the Tarpon Belly Keys mitigation work. FWC's online pages carry no publication date, so check the current rules there before the first pull.

If stone crab season is part of why you love life on this island, and you're thinking about a place closer to the Stock Island docks, a canal for your own traps, or a second home timed to the October opener, Sherri Blasingame can show you which streets and waterfronts suit the way you use the water. Let's Connect.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.