Alaska snow crab season canceled officials investigate disappearance of an est 1 billion crabs

Don't get triggered by the climate change angle, where did an estimated 1 billion snow crabs go? The first article says water temp among other possible issues, the second link is more in-depth IMHO

www.upi.com...

Oct. 14 (UPI) -- For the first time in Alaska's history, the state's Department of Fish and Game on Friday canceled the winter crab season in the Bering Strait because their numbers have fallen dramatically.

The department said about 1 billion of the crabs have mysteriously disappeared over the past two years, representing 90% of the population.

"Management of Bering Sea snow crab must now focus on conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock," Alaska Fish and Game said in a statement. "Efforts to advance our science and understanding of crab population dynamics are underway.

"With crab industry input, ADF&G will continue to evaluate options for rebuilding, including the potential for sustainably fishing during periods of low abundance. This will allow ADF&G to work on issues related to state and federal co-management, observer coverage, discard mortality, and fishery viability."

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Researchers are not fretting over what the drastic drop will mean for the ecosystem in the Arctic and what happened to them.

"Disease is one possibility," Ben Daly, a researcher with Alaska Fish and Game, told CBS News. "We've seen warm conditions in the Bering Sea the last couple of years, and we're seeing responses in a cold-adapted species, so it's pretty obvious this is connected. It is a canary in a coal mine for other species that need cold water."

Alaska's waters have been warming over the year because of climate change. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said young crabs may have starved because of it, leading to the decline.

alaskapublic.org...

Gabriel Prout co-owns the F/V Silver Spray with his dad and brothers. The Silver Spray is a 116-foot steel crabber that’s homeported in Kodiak.

He said he wasn’t surprised that Fish and Game closed the king crab fishery — in a normal year, he’d go out for king crab, too. But numbers have been on the decline and that fishery didn’t open last year, either.

“The real shocking part is the total and complete collapse of the snow crab fishery which no one expected last year when it happened, and a complete closure this year was equally as shocking,” Prout said.

Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game, said the sudden decline in snow crab came as a shock to biologists as well.

Back in 2018, there was record recruitment in the Bering Sea snow crab stock. Those numbers started to go down in 2019, and there was no survey in 2020 due to the pandemic.

“And then in 2021 when they surveyed, we saw the largest decline we’ve ever seen in the snow crab population, which was very startling, I think, for everyone,” Westphal said. “It wasn’t something we expected, we were expecting to have this record recruitment come through the population.”

The quota was down about 90% from 2020; this year’s population numbers were even worse, according to Westphal, prompting the fishery’s closure.

a reply to: putnam6

That is a whole bunch of crab, mean crap, humans have been depleting the oceans food sources for decades, to satisfy the insatiable hunger of humans, now they blame it on climate change.

Sadly, only idiots will believe this crab, I mean crap.

a reply to: putnam6

Now it's going to be like the gold rush trying to find them!

I would bet the triple LA Nina has something to do with it. It affects conditions up there too, and this is the third year. My guess is the crab have simply moved to more hospitable climes.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

THEY Do Not Want Us to Absorb Natural Iodine .........

Maybe somebody can come out with a new solution make crabs meat from bugs, that out to make the insatiable palate of the crap eaters, I mean crab eaters feel like they are eating crap, I mean crab.

Best way to boost the prices on crab, create a crisis and raise the prices, well they all can have it, I am not a crab eater, soo it does not bother me a bit.

Crustaceans happen to be the bottom feeders of the oceans; they are actually the cockroaches of the oceans.

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: Allaroundyou

THEY Do Not Want Us to Absorb Natural Iodine .........

Now by "THEY" you mean the crabs right?

The radiation from Fukushima finally made its way up to these latitudes and the crabs have a massive die-off.

Much of the North Pacific is ruined.

Yeah, lets blame climate change!

P

For those of us that actually live in a fishing industry town, the fact is that the oceans fish are being depleted. It is now official that many fisherman in northern Japan might have to give up fishing. Also, the high cost of fuel is killing the fish industry.
2 years ago, a sayori fish cost one buck, now you can see it for over 3 bucks each,which is crazy but the elderly here buy them due to their health benefits . We are living in an era which the ocean is changing too fast in 2 ways.
1. the waters are getting warmer and the fish, crabs and oysters have to move to colder water
2. over fishing in the Pacific Ocean with 40 mile nets where nothing can escape. Poor turtles.

originally posted by: Allaroundyou

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: Allaroundyou

THEY Do Not Want Us to Absorb Natural Iodine .........

Now by "THEY" you mean the crabs right?

No , I Mean " THEY " . To Speak their True Name is Death..........

They are hiding from all you porky Chinese Buffet Bandits,

a reply to: musicismagic

The regular fisherman was taken over when the mass fishing industry became a monopoly, regular fishing, allowed for the oceans to regulate their food sources and keep a balance, mass fishing industry does no give two rat asses what they get when they are using giant nets, they get what they want and the rest die.

Yep the dirty ugly truth of the modern fishing industry, when people go to the groceries store to remember from where that fish came from and how many other ocean animals were discarded to get it there.

Humans are the fungus in earth, is not the environment is the spread of the fungus known as humanity.

And for climate change, earth is nearing the end of the artificial ice age, we will be reverting back to the time when the dinosaurs rule the earth and volcanic activity was all over, we many need another asteroid to cool the earth again and stop volcanoes from activating and earth turning into a swamp.

Who knows we humans may turn into fish.

Well on the other side of the planet (about) it's happening pretty the same:

www.bbc.com...

Thousands of swimming crabs are dying in the waters of Zanzibar, Tanzania. Experts blame the warming up of the sea as cause, same as Alaska.

a reply to: marg6043

We're fishing them all to extinction anyways for the love of American pesos and Russian rubles in the Bering Sea! 🪙 Please somebody save us from all the crabs and the monies! 🦀🦀🦀💵

If one billion crabs were dead in the beaches right now, we will be smelling the stench for months, I am from an Island, I know how dead fish smells like, even the seaweed once a year comes ashore and smell like crap for a month.

Yep you can no ignore the stench of one billion dead crab, plus the fly population will be incredible too.

originally posted by: pheonix358
The radiation from Fukushima finally made its way up to these latitudes and the crabs have a massive die-off.

Much of the North Pacific is ruined.

Yeah, lets blame climate change!

P

Not gonna lie first place I checked was radiation from Fukushima, FWIW radiation made it there within 12 months of the meltdown IIRC. Still, I supposed it could have had an effect we are just now seeing.

Curious and bored I wanted to pull up some data sets from the NOAA/Bering Sea and they aren't available

originally posted by: Allaroundyou
a reply to: putnam6

Now it's going to be like the gold rush trying to find them!

Well that's the thing it don't matter the season is cancelled, would very expensive for boats to try and dash northward to find them even if they could/

I would imagine the NOAA should have a boat or 2 looking to see where they may be. Some think it is population migration some think a population die off.

originally posted by: ketsuko
I would bet the triple LA Nina has something to do with it. It affects conditions up there too, and this is the third year. My guess is the crab have simply moved to more hospitable climes.

it could be

www.fisheries.noaa.gov...

In 2019, masses of large Alaska snow crab appeared in the northern Bering Sea, where they had not been observed during past surveys. At the same time, the number of small snow crab plummeted. Across all sizes, snow crab range shrank.

These shifts occurred during a time of unprecedented warming and loss of sea ice in the Bering Sea.

Those were some of the findings from the first study examining snow crab responses to recent rapid climate shifts. The study compared recent bottom trawl survey data from the northern Bering Sea with data collected over 30 years by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in the southeastern Bering Sea. It provided new insight to help manage a valuable Alaska fishery in changing waters.

“Our motivation was to better understand how recent anomalous conditions are affecting the Bering Sea ecosystem,” said Erin Fedewa, NOAA Fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, who led the study. “Snow crab were an obvious species to study to look at potential effects of warming.”

originally posted by: marg6043

If one billion crabs were dead in the beaches right now, we will be smelling the stench for months, I am from an Island, I know how dead fish smells like, even the seaweed once a year comes ashore and smell like crap for a month.

Yep you can no ignore the stench of one billion dead crab, plus the fly population will be incredible too.

Most seem to be saying population migration FWIW as opposed to a die off, I suppose it could be a combination of that as well. But would they just wash up on beaches/coast line seems like we were of heard about that by now if it were a die off

But as the 2nd article says it basically isn't new there was a drop-off in 2019 2020 was canceled because of the pandemic. Seems to me if there was limited fishing in 19 and no fishing in 2020 fishing didn't have an effect this year

originally posted by: putnam6

originally posted by: pheonix358
The radiation from Fukushima finally made its way up to these latitudes and the crabs have a massive die-off.

Much of the North Pacific is ruined.

Yeah, lets blame climate change!

P

...

Curious and bored I wanted to pull up some data sets from the NOAA/Bering Sea and they aren't available

Yes they are. I just looked at them at:

www.ndbc.noaa.gov...

Look at the water temperatures at St Lawrence Island. That's right in the middle of the Bering Strait. There are historical recordings going back at least to the 1980s.