Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska’s commercial red king crab fishery sees ‘historically high’ value

December 1, 2025 — The commercial red king crab fishery that opened in Southeast Alaska on Nov. 1 is generating more money than it has in the past two decades combined.

Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. It last opened in Southeast Alaska in 2017. The catch that year was over 120,000 pounds, worth $1.2 million at the docks.

Eight years later, the value has skyrocketed to roughly $5 million.

“It’s definitely at a historic high,” said Adam Messmer, a regional shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Weighing 6.5 to 7.5 pounds each and selling for $26 to $30 a pound, the red king crab are worth about $200 a piece.

Messmer said expectations going into the fishery were high, but the starting price was “above everybody’s wildest dreams.”

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Alaska crabbers steer toward a stronger future

November 20, 2025 — Just a few years ago, Alaska’s crabbers were staring down one of the darkest chapters in their fishery’s history. The Bristol Bay red king crab, snow crab, and bairdi seasons had been closed or severely restricted, vessels sat idle at the docks, and the fleet that once helped define Alaska’s working waterfront was struggling to hold on.

But this year, as the Bering Sea fleet looks out over a brighter horizon, there’s cautious optimism that the tide is finally turning. “We’ve been through an epic storm these last few years,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers (ABSC). “But Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are coming out the other side and are optimistic for the future.”

A remarkable comeback

Between 2019 and 2021, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s bottom trawl survey estimated that roughly 10 billion snow crab disappeared. Now, in 2025, about 7 billion have returned, a rebound that Goen calls “one heck of a comeback.”

The turnaround wasn’t just by luck. It came through hard decisions and scientific collaboration. “When crab stocks tanked, managers tightened things up, cutting exploitation rates on red king and snow crab,” Goen explained. “At the time, it hurt. But looking back, it was the right call. Stocks are rebuilding, and we’ve learned to appreciate that extra precaution.”

Bristol Bay red king crab have stabilized, and snow and bairdi harvest levels have doubled, with western bairdi now at their strongest in more than 20 years. Meanwhile, a new mariculture project and coordinated habitat surveys are exploring how to boost red king crab recruitment and identify prime areas for releasing hatchery-reared juveniles.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: After years of waiting, Alaska’s crab fleet is finally seeing disaster relief

November 20, 2025 — Financial relief is finally reaching Alaska fishermen, roughly four years after the crab crash hit the Bering Sea fleet.

The payments cover Bristol Bay red king crab and Bering Sea snow crab fisheries from the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons, when stocks collapsed and the fisheries remained closed.

The trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers coordinated with harvesters, processors and communities to ask Gov. Mike Dunleavy to request a federal disaster declaration, which the U.S. Secretary of Commerce approved in May 2023.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Alaska crab fishery shows signs of recovery after massive crash

October 8, 2025 — Bering Sea crabbers will see a boost in catch limits this season, after years of cancellations and small harvests due to low snow and king crab stocks.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that it’s nearly doubling the harvest for the upcoming Bering Sea snow crab commercial fishing season from last year’s totals.

Fish and Game set the cap at 9.3 million pounds. That’s a low number compared to historic levels. In 1991, crabbers harvested more than 320 million pounds of snow crab.

The catch limit was set at 45 million pounds back in 2020, the year before the snow crab stock crashed. And the next year, the fishery closed for two seasons after more than 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the region.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

NPFMC says pelagic trawl gear impact needs further evaluation

June 17, 2025 — Federal fisheries managers have given the Bering Sea pollock industry until the December of 2025 to develop spatial closures for the 2026 groundfish A season to protect Bristol Bay red king crab.

The decision reached by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) at its June meeting in Oregon is based on new winter pot surveys, tagging data and other recent data sources, the council said in its motion of June 8. The council requested information from the industry to be presented at its December meeting in Anchorage.

The council also acknowledged the lengthy Pelagic Trawl Gear Innovation Discussion Paper available in May and requested an update on the progress of that initiative at its meeting of April 2026, by which time the field study portion of the protect for catcher processors is expected to be complete.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Alaska’s pollock industry looks to get to the bottom of a rising criticism

April 23, 2025 — Alaska pollock is one of the world’s most valuable fisheries, due to the enormous annual harvest volume and the versatility of the white, mild-flavored fish, federal economists say.

Fairly or unfairly, the pollock fishery’s prodigious size makes it an easy target on controversial issues such as salmon bycatch.

Lately, another criticism has taken on a higher profile – the charge that the pollock industry’s pelagic nets aren’t really “midwater” gear, but rather touch bottom much of the time, damaging seafloor habitat and mangling king and Tanner crab. These crab fisheries have seen total closures in recent years due to stock declines primarily attributed to changes in the marine environment.

To address the bottom contact issue, the pollock industry is embarking on an ambitious project to gain a better understanding of how its trawl gear works in the water and, possibly, to develop improved designs.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Board of Fish approves state-backed changes for Southeast Alaska red king crab fishery

February 26, 2025 — Red king crab commercial permit holders in Southeast Alaska will have a better chance of fishing in the coming seasons.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries approved a change in management regulations proposed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) that allows for a conservative commercial fishery when crab stocks aren’t enough for a typical competitive opening.

Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. The crab can bring in over $100 each. But commercial openings have been few and far between — just one in over a decade.

Several commercial crabbers testified to the Board of Fish at their meeting in Ketchikan in January. Andy Kittams crabs out of Petersburg, a town with over half of the fishery’s permit holders.

“Had we fished that 117,000 pounds in 2024, it would have been worth over $2 million to the state of Alaska’s fishermen. The economic trickle down to our processors and coastal communities would have doubled that,” Kittams said. “So let’s move this arbitrary threshold — simple enough: change regulation, harvest the surplus king crab when available.”

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: King crab fishery approved in Southeast AK

February 13, 2025 — Crabbers in Southeast Alaska could soon be able to harvest red king crabs after the Alaska Board of Fisheries approved a proposal enabling regulators to open a small, limited commercial king crab fishery.

Previous regulations banned officials from opening a commercial king crab fishery in Southeast Alaska unless the estimated biomass of legal male red king crab exceeds 200,000 pounds. The requirement has made it nearly impossible for regulators to open a season in the region; Southeast Alaska has only authorized three commercial red king crab seasons over the last 20 years.

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) and commercial fishers argue that the requirement was based on an outdated claim that it wasn’t financially viable for crab processors to open for anything less than a harvest based on that 200,000-pound threshold.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Federal fisheries study finds new climate-resilient genetic diversity in crab stocks

January 21, 2025 — Results of new genetic research on Alaska red king crab stocks – included in the depressed Gulf of Alaska fishery – suggest the species has previously undetermined genetic diversity, making these crab more resilient to climate change.

Researchers at the NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center collaborated with Cornell University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on the study involving whole genome sequencing data on red king crab across Alaska.

The benefit of genome sequencing over previous methods is that it’s akin to reading the full story of an organism’s makeup rather than just a chapter or two, said the study report released on Jan. 2.

Red king crab inhabit diverse environments, from coastal bays in the north to open sea shelves in the Bering Sea, as well as small bays and fjords fed by glacial melt in the Gulf of Alaska and Southeast Alaska. This environment generally includes the Gulf of Alaska, Southeast Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, the Eastern Bering Sea, Norton Sound and the Chukchi Sea. Scientists previously hypothesized that king crab in these regions are divided into three genetic groups: Gulf of Alaska/East Bering Sea, Southeast Alaska, and Aleutian Islands/Norton Sound.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: Alaska’s crab catch expected to rise with announcement of higher TACs

October 9, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) has released its total allowable catch (TAC) figures for the state’s fall and winter crab fisheries, with higher levels set for several key commercial species.

The Bering Sea red king crab TAC was set at 1,048 metric tons (MT), or 2.3 million pounds, up from the 2023 TAC of 975 MT (2.2 million pounds), with the season set to open 15 October. The TAC closely followed the recommendations of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (NPFMC) crab plan team, delivered in September 2024.

Read th full article at SeafoodSource