Saving Seafood

Feds deny Bering Sea Crabbers’ request for emergency area closure

January 23, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service denied a request for emergency action to close red king crab habitat areas to all fishing gears, ruling that “available evidence does not support a finding that the proposed emergency regulations would address the low abundance and declining trend of mature female Bristol Bay red king crab.”

The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers association filed the emergency petition Sept. 28, days widespread fishery shutdowns were ordered in response to declining red king and opilio. The crabbers sought closures in red king crab savings areas, “to protect Bristol Bay red king crab and their habitat at a time of historically low crab abundance,” according to NMFS’ announcement Friday that the petition was rejected.

The red king crab savings area was established in 1996. It is permanently closed to bottom trawling but is open to pelagic trawling, pot fishing, and longlining. The crab fleet, facing a virtually complete shutdown, asked for a Jan. 1 to June 30 closure to keep away all gears, contending that all bycatch and habitat impacts need to be addressed.

In a response Friday afternoon, the Bering Seas Crabbers said NMFS is discounting the effects of other gear types

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bering Sea crab crash puts St. Paul emergency medical services in jeopardy

January 20, 2023 — The collapse of the Bering Sea crab fisheries has put St. Paul Island at risk of losing some of its essential services.

The city’s economy is about 90% dependent on the harvest of snow crab, which closed for the first time in the fishery’s history in October. Without Bering Sea snow crab or Bristol Bay red king crab — which has been closed since 2021 — the City of St. Paul is estimating a roughly $2.7 million hit.

In light of those anticipated losses, St. Paul’s city government declared a cultural, economic and social emergency in late October following the fishery closures, and subsequently implemented budgetary cuts, hiring freezes and other measures.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Bering Sea cod fisherman fights for better catch price amid slow fishing seasons

January 10, 2023 — What was once the bread and butter for many Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fishermen now rests like a distant memory among Alaska’s commercial fishing industry.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery has been closed for two years, and along with it, Bering Sea snow crab have abruptly disappeared, causing another complete closure.

Together, the fisheries generally bring in millions of dollars to the fleet and the coastal Alaska communities that rely on them. Since 2021, when king crab closed and snow crab saw a huge decline in harvest numbers, fishermen have taken an estimated $287.7 million hit.

Without those fisheries and without that revenue, more and more boats are relying on other work like fishing for cod and small amounts of bairdi crab or summer tendering gigs just to make ends meet.

So when a group of Bering Sea fishermen recently heard they’d be getting paid less than they hoped for cod this winter season, they figured they couldn’t afford to just sit by. But that’s exactly what they did. When the season opened, they didn’t go out to fish — and it worked.

Read the full article at KTOO

Bering Sea crabbers welcome disaster relief, seek temporary area closure

December 28, 2022 — The first steps in declaring and funding a fisheries disaster declaration for Bering Sea crab “happened in a record time of only two months,” a hopeful sign for what could be a $500 million setback for the industry, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers association.

“The $300 million  included in the omnibus appropriation package for fishery disasters is a great start for much-needed money to help fishermen and communities pay their bills,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “We commend the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries, and members of Congress, particularly the Alaska and Washington delegations, for their swift action and attention to this issue affecting so many hard-working Americans and family fishing businesses.”

In mid-December U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo issued disaster declarations for several fisheries in Alaska and Washington state, a first step toward delivering both federal relief and science research into the collapses. In a surge of year-end legislation before Christmas,  Congress authorized the funding as part of the annual federal omnibus appropriations law.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska crab fishery collapse seen as warning about Bering Sea transformation

December 20, 2022 — Less than five years ago, prospects appeared bright for Bering Sea crabbers. Stocks were abundant and healthy, federal biologists said, and prices were near all-time highs.

Now two dominant crab harvests have been canceled for lack of a catch. For the first time, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in October canceled the 2022-2023 harvest of Bering Sea snow crab, and it also announced the second consecutive year of closure for another important harvest, that of Bristol Bay red king crab.

What has happened between then and now? A sustained marine heat wave that prevented ice formation in the Bering Sea for two winters, thus vastly altering ocean conditions and seafood species’ health.

“We lost billions of snow crab in a matter of months,” said Bob Foy, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, at a public forum held Dec. 12 at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. “We don’t have a smoking gun, if you will. We don’t have one particular event that impacted the snow crab — except the heat wave.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Bering Sea crabbers make online appeal for support

November 11, 2022 — The Bering Sea crab collapse has thrown fishermen and their trade association into survival mode. A new online appeal is raising money to push for new crab conservation measures and federal fishery disaster aid to fishermen.

The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Association started a GoFundMe web page this week, aiming for $50,000 in contributions to support “the small non-profit trade association advocating for crab fishermen who fish for king, snow, and bairdi crab,” the group wrote on the page.

“Since our formation in 2009, we have been funded by our fishermen directly. Now that our fisheries are closed, our fishermen do not have an income to support their own fishing businesses, let alone the trade association that represents them. This is why we are asking for your help.”

The emergency appeal is aimed at three priorities: maintaining the association’s advocacy role on science and conservation measures, working to secure federal fishery disaster assistance, and helping crab captains and crews idled by the shutdown.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: St. Paul government declares emergency in attempt to get ahead of looming crab crash

November 11, 2022 — The recent closure of the Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab fisheries has some of Western Alaska’s coastal towns taking a hard look at their futures, and one small island is bracing for a huge hit.

The Pribilof Island of St. Paul runs on snow crab — also known as opilio crab. The community’s Trident Seafoods is one of the largest crab processing plants in the world. So when fisheries management officials announced the species “overfished” and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down snow crab for the first time in the fishery’s history in October, City Manager Phillip Zavadil knew the community needed to act fast.

“We’re trying to get creative and have people understand that this is going to happen more and more, and that we need to address it,” Zavadil said. “We can do something now, instead of waiting for next year, when we don’t have any funding or we can’t provide services.”

About two weeks after ADF&G’s closure announcement, the city declared a cultural, economic and social emergency. At a meeting on Oct. 26, the St. Paul City Council voted unanimously in support of the emergency resolution, which identifies and anticipates effects of climate change on the island’s subsistence and commercial fisheries, and the subsequent impacts the closure of crab fisheries will likely have on the community of around 350 people.

Fish and Game biologists said 2021 brought the largest crash in snow crab ever seen. And while the disappearance is somewhat of a mystery, many researchers point to climate change as the likely culprit.

Rather than just reach out to state and federal representatives for help, which the municipal government has done, Zavadil said officials crafted the emergency resolution, which they hope will help soften anticipated blows caused by the crash in crab stocks.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: U.S. Representative Mary Sattler Peltola calls for federal disaster funding for crab fisheries

November 4, 2022 — On Oct. 25, Representative Mary Sattler Peltola sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro asking them to consider appropriating disaster relief funding for those impacted by this year’s total shut down of crab harvests.

This is the first time ever that the Bering Sea snow crab harvest is closed, and the second consecutive closed season for the fall red king crab harvest.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

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