Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Archives

ALASKA: Alaskan crabbers uncertain recovery, push for resilience

November 21, 2024 — The future for Alaskan crabbers remains uncertain as the fleet grapples with mounting costs, economic challenges, and an unpredictable recovery for crab stocks. As industry leaders gather at the Pacific Marine Expo (PME), the conversations are centered not just on the fisheries themselves but also on the resilience of the fishing communities and the lives that depend on them.

Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers (ABSC), and Gabriel Prout, a veteran Alaskan crab fisherman, illuminated the uphill battle facing the crab fleet. While relief programs do exist, many have proven ineffective, leaving the industry without a reliable safety net. “The disaster relief process is a disaster within itself,” Goen stated bluntly. “It takes so long for funds to reach the people who need them that by the time they do, the significance is lost.”

The landscape for Alaskan crabbers has always been challenging, but recent years have intensified these struggles. Financial institutions familiar with the regional fisheries provide some hope. “The banks are so regionalized within Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, they are relatively familiar and aware of the fisheries that they are directly supporting when they provide these loans,” noted Prout. “So, there’s a little bit of working room.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Relief applications open for Alaska’s 2019 and 2020 crab fisheries disasters

June 25, 2024 — In March of 2020 a fishery disaster was declared for the 2019 Norton Sound Red King crab fishery and a year later for the 2019-2020 Bering Sea Tanner crab fishery.

Roughly four years later, affected fishers can now apply to receive a portion of $14.4 million in total federal relief funds for both fisheries.

Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Executive Director Jamie Goen said the vast majority of that funding — nearly $13 million — will go to the Bering Sea Tanner crab fishery.

“The total for this disaster is around $13 million which can be shared with harvesters, processors, CDQ groups, communities’ research. We’re excited that that application process has started and is going to be open over the summer here,” Goen said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Federal survey delivers more bad news to the Bering Sea crab fleet

September 12, 2022 — A Bering Sea survey by federal scientists contains more bad news for Alaska, Washington and Oregon-based crabbers hoping for an upturn in upcoming harvests that last year fell to rock-bottom levels.

The federal survey results for Bristol Bay king crab are bleak and crabbers have been warned that — for a second consecutive year — there may not be a fall harvest, according to Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

The new survey results, released late last week, show that the population of mature male snow crab targeted by crabbers decreased by 22% from 2021, which at 5.6 million pounds was at the lowest level in more than 40 years. The snow crab population crashed amid a Bering Sea warming, and the new survey results are likely to result in an even smaller harvest for the upcoming winter season.

Alaska, within the limits of a federal management plan, determines how many crabs can be caught based on these surveys, as well as analysis by state and federal scientists. When more crabs are found in these surveys, the harvest levels generally climb. When the surveys indicate crab populations are in decline, the managers typically slash the quotas to give the populations a better chance to rebound. And, when the numbers fall too low, the harvests may be shut down.

As recently as 2016, the Bering Sea crab harvests grossed more than $280 million for a fleet that uses baited steel-framed traps — called pots — along the bottom of the ocean.

Snow crab and king crab historically have been the biggest-dollar harvests for Bering sea crabbers, some of whom also pursue smaller populations of other species. And the harvest cuts expected this year will put some fishermen who have big debt loads at risk of financial disaster, Goen said.

“We have got an emergency,” Goen said. “I’m trying to get Congress to act to help.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service survey does offer hope for improved harvests three to five years from now, as young snow crabs grow to adult size.

“The positive news is that we saw a significant increase in immature snow crab abundance, both males and females,” said Mike Litzow, survey lead and director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Kodiak Laboratory. “Depending on how many of these young crabs actually survive to adulthood, this could be one bright spot for the fishing industry in a few years.”

Read the full article at the Anchorage Daily News

A Russian seafood ban will drive up prices, but it’s too soon to say if Alaska fishermen will benefit

March 14, 2022 — President Joe Biden on Friday ordered a national ban on some imports from Russia, including seafood. It’s a move intended to punish that country for its invasion of Ukraine, but the ban has ripple effects that could wash ashore in Alaska.

Russian seafood competes with Alaska products for shelf space and consumer attention, particularly pollock and crab. Officials here said Friday’s announcement could benefit the Alaska fishing industry.

But the effects may be limited to a few key sectors — the major Seattle-based trawlers that haul up millions of pounds of pollock, largely for export, and hard-hit Bering Sea crab fishermen. There will be some effect on salmon fishermen, experts say, but the embargo’s impact is less clear in that industry.

“It’s a big deal for crab,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. The group represents about 350 members, including 60 boats in Alaska’s crab fleet.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

AK Bering Sea snow crab: Still on hold

February 7, 2022 — What’s the plan for Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab fishery? As it turns out, we may not know until June.

An unexpected and precipitous drop in the snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) estimated biomass resulted in an official “overfished” designation from NMFS on Oct. 19, 2021. The designation was not unexpected, given the 2021 stock assessment. The path forward, however, is as clear as Bering Sea chop in a February storm.

“What we do know is that snow crab is a variable stock where highs and lows are not unexpected. What is different is the magnitude of the high and quickly falling to a historic low,” Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, told National Fisherman. “We’re hopeful seeing some crab out there this season and look forward to working with the federal and state managers through the rebuilding plan process to help bring snow crab stocks back to higher levels.”

The 2021 stock assessment, which was presented to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in October, reported that the minimum threshold for the biomass of mature male opilios is 76,700 metric tons, and the most recent assessment estimated it at 50,600 metric tons — a historic low.

“A large year class recruited to the survey gear in 2015 and was tracked until 2018 and 2019,” the assessment report says. “But it appears to have since disappeared from the eastern Bering Sea shelf before reaching commercial size.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska crab population crash blamed on mysterious mortality event

November 5, 2021 — A crash in crab populations in the U.S. state of Alaska is being partially blamed on a mortality event scientists cannot fully explain.

A catastrophic drop in Alaska’s snow crab population led the state to set a much lower quota for the upcoming season. Along with a significant drop to the Bering Sea bairdi crab quota and the closure of the winter Bristol Bay red king crab fishery, Alaska’s overall crab fishery could lose up to USD 100 million (EUR 86.5 million) or more in value in the 2021-2022 season, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 23, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced earlier this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in over 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality tv show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of the crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at KNBA

With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 16, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in more than 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality TV show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: one in the 1980s and the other in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for yet another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Bering Sea crabbers talk shutdown, facing biomass disaster head on

September 7, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday, Sept. 3, that the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery would be closed for the 2021-22 season, for the first time in 25 years. The announcement came in advance of the management decision-making process, providing the crab fleet time to make any possible adjustments.

“While this isn’t the news we wanted to hear, we appreciate knowing as soon as possible for our business planning purposes,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “It helps us to know now so we can notify our crews, plan where our vessels are going to go next, plan shipyard time between seasons, and batten down the hatches on our finances.”

The announcement on Friday also reported on data that shows all major Bering Sea crab stocks are down, and the majority of the Bering Sea opilio crab stock seems to have moved or disappeared.

“We had hoped the Bristol Bay red king crab stocks would have rebounded by now, after several years of reduced and conservative harvest levels, but that is simply not the case,” said Gabriel Prout, a third-generation fisherman on the F/V Silver Spray. “Coupling this closure with the fact that snow crab harvest levels could be reduced as well, even after positive levels of recruitment in previous years, has the makings for a very frustrating and trying time for crab fishermen and the industry as a whole.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bering Sea crab pots drop as season opens

October 16, 2020 — Bering Sea crabbers are dropping pots for king crab, snow crab and bairdi Tanner when the fisheries get underway today, Oct. 15.

As expected, the catch was reduced for red king crab taken in the eastern Bering Sea waters of Bristol Bay — just 2.6 million pounds is a 30 percent drop from the 3.8 million pounds taken last season.

“We’ve heard from scientists in the past that there has not been good recruitment into that fishery for over a decade,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, which represents harvesters.

For the first time since 2018, there will be a bairdi Tanner crab opener with a catch of 2.3 million pounds.

Read the full story at National Fisherman