Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are reeling from the devastating news that all major crab stocks are down substantially, based on summer survey results, and the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed for the first time in more than 25 years.
The state announced the closure Sept. 3.
That stock has been on a steady decline for several years, and the 2020 harvest had dwindled to just 2.6 million pounds.
Most shocking was the drastic turnaround for snow crab stocks, which in 2018 showed a 60% boost in market-sized male crabs (the only ones retained for sale) and nearly the same for females. That year’s survey was documented as “one of the largest snow crab recruitment events biologists have ever seen,” said Bob Foy, director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Crab Plan Team.
Again in 2019, the “very strong” snow crab biomass was projected at more than 610 million pounds, and the catch was set at a conservative 45 million pounds for the 2020 fishery. No Bering Sea crab surveys were done that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the 2021 results indicated the numbers of mature male snow crab had plummeted by 55%.
The stock “seems to have disappeared or moved elsewhere,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group, Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers (ABSC). The snow crab catch for the upcoming season could be down by 70% and the stock could be classified as “over-fished,” she said, adding that no decisions will be made until the data undergo more scrutiny by plan team and council scientists.
ABSC estimates the closure of the red king crab fishery and a reduced snow crab catch could cost harvesters well over $100 million. The hit will be felt by roughly 70 vessels, more than 400 fishermen, and the processors and fishing communities that rely on the Bering Sea crab revenues.
The crabbers are calling on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) and NOAA Fisheries to conserve crab habitat and spawning grounds highlighted by scientists more than 10 years ago, but with little resulting action.
The crabbers also want managers “to create meaningful incentives to reduce crab bycatch in other fishing sectors, to reduce fishing impacts on molting and mating crab, and to estimate unaccounted for bycatch from unobserved fishing mortality from bottom and pelagic (mid-water) trawl nets, as well as pot and longline gears.”
Boats fishing the Bering Sea are required to have 100% observer coverage to track what is retained and what is tossed over the side, but it’s what is not observed that most concerns the crabbers. And what goes unseen is not factored into stock or bycatch assessments.
In a February letter to the NPFMC, ABSC highlighted studies showing “that 95% to 99% of crab in the path of trawl gear go under the foot-rope escaping capture and some portion of those likely die after contact with the fishing gear. Given this number compared to what is observed as bycatch, the potential for unobserved mortality of crab could be millions of additional pounds of dead crab bycatch.”
According to a February report by NPFMC scientists, which (unsuccessfully) proposed an amendment to the management plan for crab bycatch in the Bering Sea groundfish trawl fisheries: “Crab may actively escape capture from trawl gear, as they can slip under the trawl itself, or over the sweeps, but the damage from the gear results in mortality or delayed mortality due to injuries. The potential for unobserved mortality of crabs that encounter bottom trawls but are not captured has long been a concern for the management of groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea.”
The Crab Plan Team meets Sept. 13-16 to discuss the Bering Sea crab stock assessments, and catches for the 2021-2022 season will be announced before the Oct. 15 start of the fisheries. Reducing crab bycatch is not on the agenda.
The NPFMC meets via web conference Oct. 6-10, when it will set preliminary catch and bycatch levels for 2022.
Dungeness update
Southeast crabbers wrapped up an “average” Dungeness season for a 2½-month summer fishery that ended in mid-August.
Preliminary numbers indicate the catch came in at half of last summer’s level, said Adam Messmer, Alaska Department of Fish and Game assistant manager for the region.
“We ended up with just over 3 million pounds this season, which is right around our 10-year average. Last year was our second biggest year ever. We were kind of expecting a little bit more than what we caught this year. But we had a quite a bit of softshell crab (newly molted) at the beginning of the summer. That accounts for the missed poundage,” he said.
The 2020 Dungeness catch of six million pounds was valued at nearly $10 million at the docks.
Despite a lower catch this summer, the harvest of the two-pounders was worth much more to the fleet of 205 permit holders.
“It was our highest price ever, averaging $4.27 per pound. That came out to almost a $13 million fishery. So that pencils out to about $63,000 per permit,” Messmer said.
Southeast crabbers get another go when the Dungeness fishery reopens on Oct. 1.
Salmon watch
Alaska’s salmon catch as of Sept. 11 was on its way to 219 million fish, well above the forecast of 190 million.
Pinks pushed up the number with a total harvest so far of nearly 151 million. Nearly 65 million were from Prince William Sound and over 45 million humpies were harvested in Southeast and more than 26 million at Kodiak.
The statewide sockeye salmon catch had topped 54 million. Chums were nearing 11.5 million, cohos at 2.1 million and 243,000 Chinook salmon had crossed the docks so far.
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