By ensuring deliveries of crab to Saint Paul, the Bering Sea Crab Rationalization Program has allowed this community to survive. It has also provided Saint Paul with the opportunity to continue diversification efforts into other fisheries.
One of the communities with the greatest stake in the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program is Saint Paul, located in the Pribilof Islands in the central Bering Sea.
Saint Paul's dependence on the crab industry developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, shortly after its dependence on the northern fur seal harvest, in place since the Russian colonial period, was phased out by the federal government in 1983.
Saint Paul's residents had to look at alternative means to survive. Since oil and gas exploration was not considered an option at the time and most of the Bering Sea's commercial fisheries were already fully capitalized, this was not an easy proposition for a community that is located amid most of the Bering Sea's commercial fish stocks.
Read the complete editorial from The Alaska Journal of Commerce.