Saving Seafood

Alaska: Board of Fisheries votes down change in Southeast Dungeness crab season

January 17, 2018 — On Saturday, Alaska Board of Fisheries voted down a proposal to change commercial Dungeness crab seasons in Southeast Alaska.

Crabbers were seeking set season lengths and no option for shortened fishing time like they experienced in 2017.

Crabber Max Worhatch proposed the change and successfully got the board to add the proposal to the meeting after missing the deadline for regulation changes.

“I would like to seriously consider this,” Worhatch told the board. “I put a proposal in, just like this three years ago, didn’t get anywhere. The department felt like they had to have something to manage the fishery when it got to the low end. But in my experience and just from what I’ve seen in Oregon, California and Washington, size sex and season for Dungeness crab works and it works extremely well. It’s kind of an autopilot thing, doesn’t take a lot of work.”

Size, sex and season are a management tool for regulating the catch of crab, with a minimum size, allowing crabbers to only keep male crab and only during a set season.

While that’s part of the management in Southeast Alaska, since 2000 the Alaska Department of Fish and Game also has set the season length based on the catch from the first week of the season.

In 2017, a low commercial catch in that first week led to shortened summer and fall seasons in most of the region.

The board considered an amended proposal for set seasons, with the same starting and ending dates already used around region but deleting the language in the management plan that allows for early closure with low catches.

Crabbers said they needed the assurance of scheduled fishing time, especially with the fleet fishing in smaller areas with competition from sea otters.

Part of the Southeast Alaska summer commercial crab fishing season overlaps with the time when male Dungeness molt, or shed their shell and grow a new one.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

Alaska: Board of Fisheries to begin meeting with crabs, shrimp, clams and squid regulations

January 11, 2018 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries will meet for the next two weeks to decide on fishing regulations for the Southeast and Yakutat regions.

Unlike most years, the Alaska Board of Fisheries is joining both the shellfish and finfish hearings together for a two-week-long meeting in Sitka.

While finfish, such as king salmon, account for a majority of the meeting, the board will start with proposals on shellfish.

The board will consider a proposal regarding Dungeness crab seasons in Southeast.

Proposal 235 would repeal a management plan that’s been in place since 2000. The current plan sets the summer and fall seasons based on catch from the first two weeks of each season.

Last year, that meant the seasons were reduced by half. The proposal would set both seasons at two-months each.

“This seems like a good plan to update the fishery due to the loss of are due to sea otters,” said Joel Randrup, vice chair of Petersburg’s Fish and Game Advisory committee.

Committee chair Max Worhatch recommended the proposal to the Board of Fisheries.

The Petersburg committee voted in support of this proposal, as did Wrangell’s Advisory committee.

“If you have a two-month season, and if you only take the males and only 6-and-a-half inches you still leave enough breeding males on the ground to replenish the population,” said Wrangell chair Chris Guggenbickler.

Guggenbickler said sea mammals, mostly otters, are eating the crabs, reducing the stock. And regulations have responded by limiting areas to crabbers.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media