SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — Sept. 24, 2014 — With the opening of the 2014-2015 Alaska crab season coming on Oct. 15th, there is a lot of interest in the upcoming announcement of crab quotas.
The quotas are set by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. But before they decide, there are several industry meetings, including the crab plan team of the N. Pacific council, which review the survey results and make recommendations about interpretations. The crab plan team meetings took place Sept. 15-18 in Seattle. However, ADF&G has final authority and how they interpret the data and their models is generally not known until they make an announcement.
This year, the survey results had some anomalies, which make it very difficult to get a read on quota increases or decreases. Given the results, many industry observers expect there may be little, if any, change in all three species: Opilo, Red King Crab,and Bairdi or Tanner Crab.
The first fact is that the raw data showed significant increases in mature biomass in all three species. But there was also a spike in water tempertures during the survey of 2 degrees celsius. This causes a significant movement of crab, which prefer lower temperatures, and there is some indication that more crab may have moved into the survey area. So the population increases may be discounted.
The other factors are the multi-year averaging and the number of mature femaies.
For all three species, quotas are set in a precautionary manner using multi-year averaging, so that a spike in population results in one year does not automatically get translated into higher quota, but instead is averaged with other years. So this will lessen the impact of any population increases in a single year on the quota.
Secondly, mature males are harvested, but species also have population thresholds for mature females. In the case of Baridi, the survey showed a decline in the number of mature females, and an increase in the number of mature males. This anomaly will have to be factored into the plan.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of conflicting information that will go into the ADF&G's crab models.
The raw survey results showed an increase in Bristol Bay Red King crab biomass of mature males greater than 120 mm from 33,891 tons to 47,688 tons, which is well above the five year average. Mature Females also increased.
For Bairdi, the legal male biomass increased to 30,366 tons, but the mature female biomass decreased to 4807 tons, reversing a three year trend.
For snow crab, mature males increased from 58,381 tons to 105,442 tons, and also the level of recruits, immature males, increased 40% to over 140,000 tons. Mature females increased slightly, from 173,353 tons to 177098 tons.
So all the survey data shows a surge in crab populations, but it is unclear how much of this may be due to redistribution of the crab in response to temperature changes, and how much may be indicative of growth in total stocks.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.