Saving Seafood

Billions of crabs vanished, and scientists have a good clue why

October 25, 2022 — While counting snow crabs at sea in 2021, fisheries biologist Erin Fedewa saw that something was deeply amiss.

Fedewa, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist, spends three or four months with a team that collects crabs from 376 stations in Alaska’s Bering Sea each year. Some of these areas always teem with crabs. Scientists count thousands. But in 2021, thousands dwindled to hundreds.

“The survey last year was a huge red flag for me,” she told Mashable.

The harbingers proved right. The population of snow crabs has crashed after hitting record highs somewhat recently, in 2018. Numbers have fallen so low, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, for the first time, canceled the snow crab fishing season this year. The NOAA abundance surveys found the total snow crab population in the eastern Bering Sea dropped from an estimated 11.7 billion in 2018 down to 1.9 billion in 2022 (these surveys are a critical piece, but not the only piece, that NOAA uses to determine long-term population trends). That’s a drop of well over 80 percent.

The agency thinks a dramatic episode wiped out billions of the creatures.

“As biologists, all we can point to is some sort of large-scale mortality event,” Fedewa said.

And it’s an episode NOAA believes was ultimately stoked by exceptionally warm ocean waters in the Arctic. In other words, it could be a consequence of climate change, which can make environmental impacts significantly more extreme.

Read the full article at Mashable

Disappearance of Alaska snow crabs means some businesses might disappear, too

October 25, 2022 — Some seven billion snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Experts are still investigating the cause, but rapid warming in the Bering Sea is a likely factor.

Alaska has canceled the snow crab harvesting season for the first time ever, and commercial crabbers and the economies that depend on the species stand to lose millions.

Just a few years ago, Alaska’s snow crab population was booming. Jamie Goen with the industry group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers said businesses were making big investments.

Read the full article at Marketplace

Warming waters ‘key culprit’ in Alaska crab mass die-off

October 20, 2022 — Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species.

According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates for the crustaceans’ total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, down from 11.7 billion in 2018, or a reduction of about 84 percent.

For the first time ever, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the Bering Sea  crab season will remain closed for 2022-23, saying in a statement efforts must turn to “conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock.”

The species is also found in the more northward Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but they do not grow to fishable sizes there.

Erin Fedewa, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told AFP the shocking numbers seen today were the result of heatwaves in 2018 and 2019.

The “cold water habitat that they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this ,” she said.

Historically an abundant resource in the Bering Sea, their loss is considered a bellwether of ecological disruption.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

ALASKA: Alaskans question fishery management as snow crabs disappear

October 19, 2022 — Crabbers and restaurateurs fear the unprecedented collapse of Alaska’s snow crab industry could portend more fishery closings as climate change takes a continued toll on fish stocks.

The state, which has long dominated U.S. seafood production, is reeling after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week canceled the winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea for the first time in history (Greenwire, Oct. 12).

The department said the population of the popular snow crabs had dropped by nearly 90 percent from 2018 to 2021, plunging from 8 billion to 1 billion.

Read the full article at E&E

ALASKA: ‘We’re facing an industry’s extinction’: Bering Sea crab closures mean potentially massive losses

October 19, 2022 — This winter will mark the first time in the history of U.S. management that the Bering Sea snow crab fishery will be closed.

While other crab stocks have been declining in the North Pacific for years, the snow crab fishery’s collapse is doubly shocking for the industry. Not only is it one of the larger crab fisheries by volume in Alaska, it has also gone from booming and healthy to overfished and collapsing within five years, with little warning or clear explanation. Fishermen who invested in permits and boats less than five years ago are now looking at bankruptcy.

Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, the trade organization representing the industry, has estimated the direct financial losses at about $500 million. Adding in the ripple effects to the economy, that estimate rises to about $1 billion. Jamie Goen, the executive director of ABSC, said fleet members have expressed frustration with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s past inaction on crab conservation as well as sadness going into this closure.

[Earlier coverage: Alaska cancels Bering Sea king and snow crab seasons over worries of population collapse]

“(There is) deep sadness and shock with what we’re facing right now,” she said. “I think there was hope there would at least be a small fishery to keep our guys surviving and vessels working.”

The council heard and agreed to set maximum catch limits, which the Alaska Department of Fish and Game followed with the announcement of a total closure for both the Bering Sea snow crab fishery and Bristol Bay red king crab. This is the second year in a row for Bristol Bay red king crab, which has been declining for more than a decade, but this is the first Bering Sea snow crab closure in the history of U.S. management, Goen said.

Just prior to the pandemic, survey numbers from the snow crab population looked healthy enough for managers to raise catch limits and to tempt crew members to buy into the fishery. That was a sign of a healthy fishery, Goen said, which was also rationalized — a federal process designed to make sure a fishery is adequately conserved and managed while allowing for maximum sustainable use. During the pandemic, there was no survey conducted, so the next available data came from the survey in 2021. That was what showed a near-complete stock collapse and a nearly 90% cut in the total allowable catch for last season.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: After a record 2022 sockeye harvest, Bristol Bay focusing on getting fish to market

October 18, 2022 — With a record sockeye season in the books for Bristol Bay, the largest salmon fishery in the U.S. state of Alaska, industry players are now focusing on getting this year’s harvest to market.

Preliminary data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) recorded a run of 79 million fish – 8 percent over the preseason forecast of 73.4 million fish. The fishery caught 60.1 million sockeye salmon, surpassing the previous record of 44.3 million sockeye set in 1995.

“I was pretty amazed this year that the fish came in such large numbers,” Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), told SeafoodSource. 

Even with the record number of fish caught, Wink said operations moved smoothly over the two-harvest period in what are the world’s most-abundant sockeye fishing grounds.

Wink said he wasn’t aware of any reports of fishermen being put on limit, which can occur when there are backups at processing plants.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska crabbers rip conservation decision to cancel over $200M harvest: ‘Unbelievable’

October 17, 2022 — Alaska crabbers are reacting after officials canceled the fall-winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea for the first time, in addition to the Bristol Bay red king crab harvest.

According to a press release from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, an analysis of trawl survey results for the Bering Sea snow crab with the National Marine Fisheries Service found the stock was estimated to be below the regulatory threshold for opening a fishery.

“Therefore, Bering Sea snow crab will remain closed for the 2022/23 season. ADF&G appreciates and carefully considered all input from crab industry stakeholders prior to making this decision. Understanding crab fishery closures have substantial impacts on harvesters, industry, and communities, ADF&G must balance these impacts with the need for long-term conservation and sustainability of crab stocks. Management of Bering Sea snow crab must now focus on conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock,” it explained.

Read the full article at Fox Business 

Alaska: Bycatch task force considers new rules, more research to protect Alaska fish intercepted at sea

October 17, 2022 — In the search for a solution to the problem of bycatch, the unintended at-sea harvest of non-target species, the stakes in Alaska are high.

Now a special task force is nearing the end of a year-long process to find solutions that satisfy competing interests to the problem of bycatch, which refers to fish that are caught incidentally by commercial fishers who are targeting other fish.

Many of the mostly Indigenous residents of western Alaska who depend on now-faltering salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers have said strict rules to reduce at-sea bycatch are needed to help alleviate a crisis. Disasters have been declared for these fisheries.

Serena Fitka, the executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association who grew up in the Yup’ik village of St. Mary’s near the Bering Sea coast, said she has not been able to harvest river salmon for three years.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media