I just went to the supermarket and they had King Crab Legs (nice ones too) for $9.99/lb.  They're normally $19.99/lb there.   I would have bought them up but I won't be home for hours.

Did I miss a good deal or is this a sign of things to come?

Mmm...crab legs.


I've never heard of them being that cheap, though - maybe they were a day too old and they're trying to get rid of them?

I thought that too (they even had King Crab chunks out on the salad bar, yes, genuine King Crab chunks.)

But they sell them frozen here, so I can't imagine they'd go bad for a while.  Probably just not selling them at those prices.  But down to $9.99/lbs is pretty drastic.

I'm thinking I should have bought a few pounds.

I guess the peak crab theory is a bust.

'Mildly Hazardous Catch'

Its because they feel pain.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29915025/

Lobsters and crabs feel pain, study shows
Findings add to growing evidence that virtually all animals, can suffer
By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery Channel
updated 10:53 a.m. CT, Fri., March. 27, 2009

Ripping the legs off live crabs and crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment, given two new studies that indicate crustaceans feel pain and stress.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that virtually all animals, including fish, shellfish and insects, can suffer.

Robert Elwood, the lead author of both papers, explained to Discovery News that pain allows an individual to be "aware of the potential tissue damage" while experiencing "a huge negative emotion or motivation that it learns to avoid that situation in the future."

Both pain and stress are therefore key survival mechanisms.

Elwood, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The Queen's University in Belfast, and colleague Mirjam Appel studied hermit crabs collected from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland. All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat.

Elwood and Appel gave small electric shocks to some of the crabs within their shells. When the researchers provided vacant shells, some crabs –– but only the ones that had been shocked –– left their old shells and entered the new ones, showing stress-related behaviors like grooming of the abdomen or rapping of the abdomen against the empty shell.

Grooming, as for a person licking a burnt finger, "is a protective motor reaction and viewed as a sign of pain in vertebrates," the researchers wrote.

It has been thought that the behavior of crustaceans is mostly reflexive, but the fact that they showed signs of physical distress at the same time they changed a behavior –– in this case, moving into another shell –– suggest they feel pain as well, according to the researchers.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior.

For the second paper, slated for publication in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, Elwood, along with Stuart Barr and Lynsey Patterson, outline seven reasons, with supportive findings, they believe crustaceans suffer.

For one thing, they argue, crustaceans possess "a suitable central nervous system and receptors." They learn to avoid a negative stimulus after a potentially painful experience. They also engage in protective reactions, such as limping and rubbing, after being hurt.

Physiological changes, including release of adrenal-like hormones, also occur when pain or stress is suspected. And the animals make future decisions based on past likely painful events.

If crabs are given medicine –– anesthetics or analgesics –– they appear to feel relieved, showing fewer responses to negative stimuli. And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess "high cognitive ability and sentience."

In the past, some scientists reasoned that since pain and stress are associated with the neocortex in humans, all creatures must have this brain structure in order to experience such feelings. More recent studies, however, suggest that crustacean brains and nervous systems are configured differently. For example, fish, lobsters and octopi all have vision, Elwood said, despite lacking a visual cortex, which allows humans to see.

It was also thought that since many invertebrates cast off damaged appendages, it was not harmful for humans to remove legs, tails and other body parts from live crustaceans. Another study led by Patterson, however, found that when humans twisted off legs from crabs, the stress response was so profound that some individuals later died or could not regenerate the lost appendages.

Chris Sherwin, a senior research fellow in the Clinical Veterinary Science division at the University of Bristol, has also studied pain in invertebrates.

Sherwin told Discovery News, "The question of whether invertebrates experience pain is fundamental to our legislation that protects animals and our behavior, attitude and use of these highly complex organisms."

He said that while the recent studies suggest crustaceans experience "something akin to pain, rather than fixed, reflex responses," additional research is needed.

More on crustaceans | pain
© 2009 Discovery Channel

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29915025/

yes you should have bought

market strategies....you tell all your friends about it they go to get some and the price is 12.99....then 14.99...16.99 ...ect people get excited and will buy at that point no matter what the price.....

The King Crab bubble has burst!!! I told you $19.99 was unsustainable.......but NNOOOOOO, nobody listened!!!!


RG

[homersimpson] woo hoo!  cheap seafood [/homersimpson]
<< ambulance siren in background >>

your sure it was king crab and not snow crab?

Positively, absolutely.  They were the mack-daddy Red King Crab on top of that.  Legs about as long as your arm and thick as a baby's arm.

I should have gotten some.

But I've never seen them as big as you could get them in the 70s and 80s.  They were so mature they even had bristles all over.

Goddammit!!!


Now I want crab legs!

Oh, wow, that sounds good......go back and get some. I'll be up first thing tomorrow for the cookout.

Better get here earlier than that.  

interesting

Like everything else king crab is graded. If you pick up some of the 9.99 priced and then go to another , better seafood store and get some of the 19.99 you will most likly find that the 19.99 has alot more meat with a harded shell, and it usually tastes better. Personally I find my area costco has the best price on grade a king crab an the best price, the have also had claws only for 3 less a pound a couple of times in the last few months.
Off topic but, there is a high end resturant in my area called Salties and they have an all you can eat brunch buffet, Last time I was there just before christmas they had dungoness, king, snow and stone crab claws along with shrimp and oysters on the half shell. It's not always like that because they only serve seasonaly availbly fresh ( as possible). All for 24 a person, come early and stay late.

Supply and Demand would be my guess.

Money is tight, so people are buying it less (demand drops) but they continued catching and selling them (supply increases) and in order to move the product (avoid waste) they dropped the price.

I'm hungry for crab now...

_MaH

Yeah, the don't have to follow US Fish and Game or US Commerce regs.   All hail china-mart.

time to stock pile.

there's been a price differential of about $10/pound between some of the regular markets and the sea food markets around here for years.  Same stuff.

Theres no king crabs in China, they get them from the same place everyone else gets them.  Those things are tasty and I loved seeing those whole King crabs from my days in the land of the rising sun.

i'm gonna go on a limb here and say the 1 of 19.99 fell off or someone wrote it down wrong.

Here in the midwest one of the common grocery stores (Hy-Vee) runs sales on King Crab for either 7.99 or 9.99 every holiday, Father's Day, Valentines Day, 4th of July, Christmas etc..
I think it is a loss leader to get you in to buy other stuff but we always grab some to eat right away and freeze a little more for later. No limit or anything..

Have you seen any ads or previews for this season's "Deadliest Catch?" I haven't. That is the reason prices are down. We don'thave to pay Mike Rowe or the boat guys.

Just seen an ad yesterday...they are due out mid April (deadlest catch)

This time of year they are in season and on sale.

No shit the motherfuckers drop into our territorial waters and fucking steal them .