Tickets to the university’s fifth annual Crab Fest dinner sold out in record time, as longtime crab connoisseurs joined newcomers to snatch up the 1,200 slots in three days last week.

The Oct. 21 Crab Fest — sponsored by Dining Services and the Student Government Association — is being subsidized by the SGA subsidy to keep ticket prices low even as the cost of crabs has soared.

“I went ahead and used the prices from last year” — $10 for 4 crabs plus the buffet and $15 for 8 crabs and the buffet — said Jon Yahirun, the SGA’s director of programming and traditions.

Prices for the crustaceans increased after April’s oil spill sidelined the Gulf of Mexico’s fisheries, SGA President Steve Glickman said, but he didn’t want that to stand in the way of the Crab Fest.

“This is the first year that I’ve heard people really excited about it, and it’s really becoming a tradition on campus that people know about,” Glickman said.

Yahirun said he wanted to make sure people who enjoyed Crab Fest in the past could continue to do so and at the same time welcome newcomers with consistent prices, despite at a higher total cost to the SGA.

“It wasn’t a huge sacrifice,” Yahirun said.

Besides the steady prices, Glickman said he believed marketing heavily to incoming freshmen — who received Crab Fest information packages — helped draw attention to the event and boost its popularity.

Tereance Lynch, a freshman kinesiology major who will be attending Crab Fest for the first time, said it was the value that encouraged him to buy a ticket.

“I’m looking forward to the eight crabs I’ll be getting in addition to the unlimited amount of food I’ll be able to eat,” Lynch said. “I thought it was a pretty good deal.”

It’s not just prices that are staying the same. Crab Fest is maintaining its zero-waste policy, Yahirun said, meaning all of the materials the event will use are either compostable or recyclable.

“Sustainability is one of our biggest goals, so this is a great way for students to see that we’re making an effort to do that,” Yahirun said.

Crab Fest is set for Oct. 21 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Cole Field House. The 1,200 tickets, which went on sale last Monday, were gone by the middle of the week.

meehan at umdbk dot com