Saving Seafood

Bering Sea snow crab fishery sees major TAC increase for 2025

October 8, 2025 — Bering Sea commercial snow crab fisheries will open on Oct. 15 with a total allowable catch (TAC) of 9.3 million pounds, nearly double the TAC allocated for the 2024-25 season.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game apportioned the catch to include 8.37 million pounds for individual fishing quota (IFQ) and 930,000 pounds for community development quota (CDQ), based on the 2025 estimate of total mature snow crab biomass above the required threshold.

“With the snow crab harvest levels roughly doubling for the upcoming season, crabbers are relieved to see the stock improving,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “Boats are gearing up, and crabbers are ready to go fishing,” said Goen, who was appointed to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in August of 2024, to the Washington seat vacated with the death of Kenny Down.

Read the full article at the Cordova Times

ALASKA: Vessel registration begins for Alaska crab fisheries

August 14, 2025 —  Pre-season vessel registration is underway for three Bering Sea commercial crab fisheries, raising optimism that there will be harvests of Bristol Bay red king crab and Bering Sea snow and tanner crab in the 2025-2026 season.

“That’s a good sign that all of the big three crab fisheries will likely be open,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “I expect most crab boats will pre-register for the fisheries, in the hopes that the harvest levels will be higher than last season.”

“Last season, only about half of the crab fleet fished since the harvest levels were at historic lows after several years of closure,” said Goen, who is also one of two voting members from the state of Washington serving on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

“Crab harvesters are optimistic for a better season this fall,” Goen said. “The crab stocks looked healthy last season, and several captains thought the harvest levels could have been higher. In addition, we’re hearing reports from some other fishing sectors that come across crab noting there are lots of crab out there,” Goen said. “The snow crab population, in particular, may be bouncing back faster than expected,” she said.

“The industry is anxious to hear reports from NOAA Fisheries’ summer survey to see if it validates what the fishermen are seeing. The survey data will be reported when the council’s crab plan team meets the week of Sept. 8 to start the process of setting crab harvest levels before the scheduled Oct. 15 season start.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Unalaska formally accepts disaster relief, 3 years after crab crash

July 2, 2025 — Unalaska is finally seeing some financial relief nearly three years after the collapse of Alaska’s snow crab and red king crab fisheries.

The city has now officially secured more than $3 million in federal disaster money.

The City of Unalaska formally accepted the relief funds at its June 24 city council meeting. That officially adds the money to the city budget, but the move was mostly procedural.

Councilmember Shari Coleman, who’s been on the council since the city first braced itself for a shortfall in 2021, said the move was largely procedural.

Read the full article at KUCB

ALASKA: Bering Sea snow crab season kicks off for first time in three years

January 29, 2025 — Earlier this month, commercial snow crabs started hitting Unalaska’s docks again, for the first time in nearly three years.

The Bering Sea snow crab fishery reopened in mid-October, after billions of the crab disappeared and the fishery was shut down in October 2022. This season’s first catch was delivered on Jan. 15. Opilio, or snow crab, is generally fished in the new year and into the early spring. The season runs through May.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ethan Nichols said nine vessels are actively participating in the Bering Sea commercial fishery.

“The fleet is just getting started, for the most part,” Nichols said. “Fishing so far — the reports from the grounds — there seems to be good numbers of nice, new shell, large snow crab on the far northern portions of the grounds.”

Nichols said right now the number of keepers per pot, also known as CPUE or catch per unit effort, is somewhat low coming in at 134, but that will increase as the season progresses.

“That’s only coming from a handful of our first deliveries, and that includes some prospecting by vessels early on in the season,” he said. “So far, the highest CPUEs are being seen on the northern portion of the grounds. And as vessels get more dialed in on those hot spots or those productive areas of fishing, they’ll be coming with full loads of crab that are more reflective of the hot spots on the grounds.”

Read the full article at KYUK

Alaska cities reach agreement on Bering Sea snow crab harvest

January 9, 2025 — The cities of Unalaska and St. Paul in the U.S. state of Alaska have reached an agreement to share revenue collected from the processing of 1.6 million pounds of Bering Sea snow crab.

After two years of closures, NOAA Fisheries announced in October 2024 that it would be opening up the Bering Sea crab fishery for a limited harvest with a 4.7 million pound total allowable catch (TAC). Around 1.6 million pounds of that TAC was designated for the North Region, which, according to a framework agreed to by harvesters and processors in September 2024, had to be processed in St. Paul.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: What determines total allowable catch? Fish and Game breaks the equation down

October 16, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game hosted its annual Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Crab Industry Meeting on Friday.

Topics included Fish and Game’s formula for determining the total allowable catch (TAC) for certain crab seasons this year.

The meeting specifically focused on what those in the industry call the big three: Bering Sea crab stocks (which included Bering Sea snow crab), Tanner snow crab, and Bristol Bay red king crab.

“The public might not agree with some of the decisions that our group makes,” ADF&G researcher Ben Daly said. “Our aim for these meetings is at least to provide that level of transparency so they understand the thought process that the department goes through.”

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

In surprising move, Bering Sea snow crab fishery to reopen after 2 year closure

October 7, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

The announcement comes as a surprise to many fishermen, after roughly 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the Bering Sea over a span of four years, and Fish and Game closed the fishery in 2022. Recently, scientists have learned that the disappearance was likely due to ecological shifts, and there’s been little hope within the industry that stocks would recover anytime soon.

Read the full article at KUCB

US government allocates USD 40 million in financial relief for Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab fishery

October 1, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Commerce has allocated USD 40 million (EUR 36 million) in financial relief to fishers and businesses impacted by the 2023/2024 Alaska Bering Sea snow crab fishery.

“As climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to Alaska’s economy, the Department of Commerce remains committed to providing disaster relief across the state,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said. “This funding will help Alaskans recover from the Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery disaster, support the community’s efforts to prevent future disasters, and keep jobs, recreation and cultural connections thriving.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

‘It’s still crisis mode’: Will Bering Sea snow crabbing season be canceled for third straight year?

September 30, 2024 — As the Pacific Northwest’s crabbing crisis continues, scientists are still working to determine if this year’s snow crabbing season will be canceled for a third straight year. 

“The reality of the situation is that until we see more recruitment into that large male size class that the fishery targets, it seems in conversations that the industry is preparing for closure,” said Erin Fedewa, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Fedewa studies the species and collects population data that will eventually help determine the quantity crabbers can catch annually. However, the last five years have brought quite a few changes.

In 2019, there were record-high snow crabs in the Bering Sea and industry-wide optimism. In 2020, the annual survey was canceled, so no one knew the status of the crabs. Then, when Fedewa and her team returned to count the population in 2021, millions of crabs seemingly vanished.

What caused the swift decline?

Scientists at NOAA have since identified the main reason for the collapse as “an ecological shift from Arctic to sub-Arctic conditions in the southeastern Bering Sea due to human-caused climate change.”

It was discovered that the warmer water temperatures didn’t immediately kill the crabs, but when the waters got too warm, their metabolism increased. There wasn’t enough food to keep up with their caloric demand.

In addition to temperature changes, the team at NOAA noted other factors that indicate a shift from an Arctic to a sub-Arctic regime. They found a decline in sea ice and an increase in snow crab predators, a disease known to kill snow crabs, and areas of spring algal blooms.

The study also confirmed scientists’ initial beliefs that the population decline was not due to overfishing as the level of mortality was too high.

Read the full article at ABC 10

ALASKA: U.S. Department of Commerce allocates $39.5 million in funding for Alaska fishery disaster

September 25, 2024 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo announced today the allocation of $39.5 million to address a fishery resource disaster that occurred in the Alaska Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery from 2023 to 2024.

“As climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to Alaska’s economy, the Department of Commerce remains committed to providing disaster relief across the state,” said Secretary Raimondo. “This funding will help Alaskans recover from the Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery disaster, support the community’s efforts to prevent future disasters, and keep jobs, recreation and cultural connections thriving.”

Congress provided fishery resource disaster assistance funding in the 2022 and 2023 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Acts. NOAA Fisheries determined that this fishery is eligible to receive a funding allocation from those appropriations. The funds will improve the impacted fisheries’ long-term economic and environmental sustainability. The allocation may fund activities in support of commercial fishing and other associated industries affected by the disaster.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries