October 16, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — There will be a Bristol Bay red king crab fishery this year, though at an extremely low level, continuing a downward trend that probably hasn’t yet hit the bottom.
“Red crab is not looking well at all, everything is down,” said Miranda Westphal, shellfish management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska. “There’s not a lot coming into the system.”
The crab season opens Oct. 15, and crab fishermen are busy working around Unalaska docks rigging pots for the red crab. The snow crab season officially opens the same day, but fishermen won’t start targeting the smaller opilio snow crab for several months.
Bering Sea crab quotas were announced Sunday by ADF&G’s Division of Commercial Fisheries. The red king harvest level is set at 3.79 million pounds, down 12% from last year’s 4.3 million, Westphal said.
“I don’t know if it’s ever been this low,” she said.
In one bright spot, at least for this year, the snow crab quota increased by 23%, at 34 million pounds, up from last year’s 27.6 million pounds. But future snow crab populations appear weak, and don’t bode well for upcoming years, she cautioned.
The Tanner crab season is closed in both the eastern and western districts, a “depressing” development, said Frank Kelty, who steps down as Unalaska mayor later this month. Yet despite this year’s closure, Westphal said Tanners appear to have a bright future.
“It’s actually looking the best out of all the stocks,” said Westphal, citing survey results showing large populations of juvenile Tanner crab, especially in the western district.
Two smaller Bering Sea crab fisheries that are frequently closed did not open this year. The St. Matthew’s blue king crab, and Pribilof Islands red and blue king crab fisheries are both closed again.
The quotas are set based on the summer trawl survey of the Bering Sea conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service in an annual research projects that catches all species with nets, and uses the results to determine the quotas of crab and pollock and flatfish in the various commercial fisheries.
Kelty said he wasn’t surprised by the bad news when the quotas were announced over the weekend.
“This is what I expected,” he said.
Kelty, like Westphal, is also worried about the future of the snow crab fishery. He said warming waters will attract Pacific cod to the area north of St. Matthew’s Island, which he said is the “nursery” of snow crab, and their babies are the “favorite food” of the cod.
Previously, the cod stayed to the south, blocked by a deepwater “cold pool” of seawater, which is now shrinking. And as the water warms in the depths, the cod travel further north. Kelty said he knows cod like baby snow crab from personal experience, “cutting a lot of cod bellies open,” as a former Unalaska seafood worker.
According to NMFS, “In 2017 and 2018 the maximum extent of sea ice in the Bering Sea was the lowest on record. The cold pool was dramatically smaller than usual and large numbers of Pacific cod and pollock were found in the northern Bering Sea in the spring and summer months.”
Meanwhile, another Bristol Bay red king crab survey project is underway in the Bering Sea, this one involving the unmanned wind and solar-power Saildrones, which are tracking acoustic tags attached to the crab during the summer trawl survey.
“All vessels are asked to avoid the saildrones,” which look like red kayaks with big red rigid sails and solar panels.
The Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation is conducting the study with the federal agency NOAA Fisheries to “better understand crab movement in the Bering Sea.”
“Any commercial fisherman that captures a tagged red king crab should note the capture coordinates and tag number and quickly release it unharmed in the same location it was captured,” according to a postcard sent to fishermen.
Two representatives from the study attended a recent Unalaska City Council meeting to explain the project, Leah Zacher a NOAA scientist, and Scott Goodman, the executive director of BSFRF. More information is available at bsfrf.org, or facebook.com/BSFRF.
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.