March 12, 2014 — The snow crab poses a huge commercial potential, which Norway and Russia are just about to start exploring.
“We who live by the Barents Sea are very lucky that the alien, invasive species that have settled here are of the valuable sort”, says Konstantin Sokolov of the Russian research institute PINRO. “Other places, like for example the Black Sea, have had invasions of species like jellyfish”. “And if we see that the population of crabs becomes too large, we have the possibility to increase fishing to bring it down,” Sokolov says.
There is already a market for snow crab in the world. Both in Canada and Alaska the snow crab is regarded as a valuable resource. Canada last year caught more than 100,000 tons of crab.
The snow crab is such a new species that no regulations of commercial fishing have yet been established, neither in Russian nor in Norwegian waters. In 2013 a few vessels started fishing snow crab in the international waters of the Barents Sea. The Norwegian vessel “Arctic Wolf” caught 60 tons of crab during two trips in April 2012, Kyst og Fjord reported.
According to Konstantin Sokolov, Russia plans to open up for snow crab fishing in Russian Economic Zone in 2014.
Read the full story at the Barrents Observer