Transplanted Alaskan that I am, maybe I can help with your questions on
Alaska King Crab.  Save your money.  King crab is good if you catch it
yourself and prepare it at home, but otherwise, it's not worth all the
money you'll wind up paying for it.  Remember, those shells are heavy!  For
the amount of meat you'll get out of it, it's not worth the effort or
expense.  Alaskan Dungeness, on the other hand, is a real treat.  It's a
small, meaty, sweet-meated crab that used to be abundant before the sea
otters wiped them out, along with 80% of the King Crab fisheries.  But
Dungeness is definitely the preferred crab.  Snow Crab is just a
tidbit--Big, long, spindly legs with hardly any meat in them.  If you can
find Dungeness, that's what you go for.

Incidentally, Eskimos don't eat crab unless they go south to Juneau or
other towns on the Pacific coast, so I suspect that they get their mercury
from tainted surface water, since the north coast of Alaska is all
permafrost year round and there are no deep wells.  The mercury levels that
people claim are in Alaskan waters is just that, a claim.  North Pacific
fish, from water at the freezing point, is as nutritious and tasty as
anything in the world.  One bite of a FRESH Alaskan salmon will prove my
case.You'll never eat tuna again!  Also, catching one of them is like
fishing in heaven!  They say that it takes a real fisherman to drag his
hook through a school of pinks and not get a fish on!  If you ever have a
chance to go up and do some saltwater fishing, TAKE IT!!!

Liz