October 28, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery is starting off with an abundance of drama, a near stand-down and tales of a drone scandal, and a paucity of male crab which keep getting bigger and bigger without a baby boom in the water and are the biggest on average in the history of the fishery.

The rationalized fleet is going for the lowest amount of red king crab since 1982, a storm is blowing in, permits not issued until the morning of the starting day, and apparently unfounded rumors of confidential crab data leaked from sailing drones.

The fleet of around 50 boats is targeting 3.8 million pounds of red king crab, the lowest amount since the harvest of 2.9 million pounds by 89 boats in 1982, the year of the great crash when the guideline harvest level was much larger at between 10 and 20 million pounds, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The crabbers won’t be protesting in port and staying off the fishing grounds, since the federal regulators returned to work Tuesday following a three day weekend, and issued the “hired master” permits required by some of the boat captains.

At a pre-season meeting with fishermen sponsored by Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers at the Grand Aleutian Hotel Sunday, Bristol Mariner Capt. Tom Sureyan called for stand-down by members of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, to avoid legal penalties if a boat was caught without the required permit.

The call for a stand-down reminded some at the Unalaska meeting of the days when fishermen met in hotel conference rooms and voted to go on strike for higher prices, although this was not nearly as emotional.

But despite the process slowed by a federal holiday, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishing fleet finally got all the paperwork in order before the start of the season on Tuesday at noon, the official opener, although some were staying in port awaiting a forecasted storm.

ADF&G shellfish biologist Ethan Nichols said Tuesday that 45 boats were registered red king crab, and more were expected, and would eventually rise to 45 yo 55 vessels, about the same as last year when 55 participated.

Nichols said most of the boats were staying in port Tuesday, with a storm forecasted with 40-knot winds and 30-foot waves on Wednesday. But several vessels had already left and were out on the grounds ready to go fishing he said.

Last year’s average legal male red king crab weighed 7.1 pounds, up from 6.8 pounds the year before and biologists think the reason bigger animals are more common is because small- and medium-size crab are less common. While nobody can say with certainty why the stocks are declining, environmental factors are a leading theory, with deep waters warming up, and he also said it appears Pacific cod are munching more of the shellfish.

According to ADF&G records, 7.1 pounds per average male Bristol Bay red king crab is the heaviest ever, based on data going back to 1966.

Susan Hall, of the National Marine Fisheries RAM division in Juneau, said all the permits were issued on Tuesday morning, hours before the fishery opened, and as required by law. She said there was an “expectation” that the permits would be issued over the weekend, but that didn’t happen with federal offices closed Monday for Columbus Day.

ICE Executive Director Jake Jacobsen said the permits were delayed because of an earlier delay caused by federal computer problems, which slowed the issuance of individual fishing quotas to three days instead of a few hours.

“We’re not very happy about it,” said Jacobsen, saying some fishermen might have left for the grounds a day earlier if they had all their permits. “Almost half of the fleet didn’t have permits,” he said.

“They just ghosted us, they went black, they just didn’t respond” after federal offices closed Friday afternoon for the long weekend, Jacobsen said, adding that when the regulators returned to work Tuesday morning they gave the matter their full attention.

“It was an ordeal,” he said.

Jacobsen said the permit problem affected about half the ICE fleet, so the board of directors sought a voluntary stand-down to give all the boats an equal start. Of the 52 vessels in ICE, 27 boats already had their permits, while 25 did not, he said.

The hired master permits are only required for boats where the captain doesn’t own any IFQs, or individual fishing quotas, according to Krista Milani of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Unalaska. She said captains with a leased quota need the permits.

In a bright note, prices are looking good.

“I’m fairly confident we’ll get more than last year, but you never know for sure until the crab is sold,” Jacobsen said.

Last year’s final price was $10.53 a pound, above the advance price of $8.40 per pound.

Jacobsen doubted a fishery would even have happened with such a small quota in a pre-rationalized era when over 200 boats would compete for crab, and would probably catch excessive quantities. But now, with each boat assigned a specific amount, the fishery is “fairly easy to manage” he said.

At the Sunday hotel meeting and pizza party, ABSC Executive Director Jamie Goen also reported a rumor that confidential data on the location of tagged red king crab had been leaked by the Saildrones studying the crabs’ movement in a joint project of the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.

Goen said it sounded like a bogus story, and couldn’t believe a professional company like Saildrone would improperly release the latitudes and longitudes of where crab were found. Saildrone is based in the San Francisco area, founded by Richard Jenkins who set the world record for fastest wind-propelled land vehicle.

The two red unmanned sailing drones were launched recently in Unalaska to track crab tagged this summer by a fishing vessel hired for crab research, the Royal American, according to Leah Zacher of NOAA, based in Kodiak. The drones were set to sail between Sept. 26 and Nov. 10.

The crab were caught in a pot and then tagged over the summer during a survey also involving trawl gear to study a different crab species, Tanners, she said.

The allegedly leaked data might help fishermen find crab faster, instead of wasting time dropping pots into unproductive areas of the sea floor in a lean year, according to one theory, though that would be hard to prove according to Zacher who said an investigation turned up no leaks.

“As far as we can tell, it’s an unfounded rumor, and there’s nothing to this,” according to Zacher.

Jacobsen said he too heard the rumor which supposedly originated in a local bar where a technician disclosed location information, not that it would have done much good. “I don’t think it really would have helped anybody anyway,” Jacobsen said. ABSC is the science arm of ICE.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.