Tentacled yellow marauders

This late-breaking entry* just in for the Elongated Yellow Fruit of the Year competition!

... Some crabbers say as many as half of their traps are coming up empty, save for the remnants of dead crabs. That's because the marauding tentacled beasts have moved in to stake their claim.

Kathy Birren, owner of the Hernando Beach Seafood Co. in Hernando County, said that while intrusion by the eight-legged creatures has always been a problem for trappers, she estimated that stone crab harvesting is down about 80 percent from usual this time of year.

All this and a "Gulf of Mexico delicacy" too. Wouldn't it be fun if we had time to concentrate on the real writing stuff, like the weirdly doubled attribution in the second graf above? For today's editing exercise, see how quickly you can cut that grafs's Flesch-Kincaid grade level in half!

* Thanks to Lisa at the Bremner Center for the tip.