Bering Sea crab surveys show populations still low a year after marquee Alaska harvests closed

A year after state officials imposed unprecedented harvest shutdowns on crab fishing in the Bering Sea, stocks continue to be in dismal shape, suggesting that continued closures may be on the way.

The snow crab population in the southeastern Bering Sea is in even worse shape than it was last year, when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the 2022-23 harvest, according to this year’s research surveys.

Those survey results were presented on Wednesday to the advisory panel of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is charged by the federal government with managing fisheries in the region. The presentation was by Mike Litzow, a National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologist who is one of the leaders of the council’s team that plans for crab fisheries.

“We’ve never seen the abundance this low. We’ve never seen a decline as great as what we saw from 2018 to 2021. That was completely unprecedented. And we just continue to see those small animals dying out of the population without being replaced, so I think it’s fair to say we’re in an unprecedented situation for snow crab,” Litzow told the advisory panel. He directs NOAA Fisheries’ Kodiak laboratory and shellfish assessment program.

The council and its associated panels are meeting this week in Anchorage.

Snow crab numbers crashed 80% from 2018 to last year, according to NOAA surveys. It will take several years for that population to recover, if recovery is possible, experts have said.

For Bristol Bay red king crab, another population for which commercial harvests were canceled last year, the picture is marginally better, suggesting a small harvest might be possible.

The abundance of mature females was up 46% since last year, the survey found – though that is an increase from levels of mature females that were the lowest since at least the mid-1990s. Abundance of mature males in the Bristol Bay red king crab population was 21% lower than last year, the survey showed, and those numbers are also lower than counts for most years stretching back to the 1970s.

Abundance in fisheries is defined as the number of a certain type of fish or total weight of that fish in a specific geographic area.

Last year’s closure of the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery was the second consecutive shutdown year for that harvest, which was also unprecedented.

The prospects for the population’s future depend on recruitment, a term for the process of young fish surviving and transitioning into later life stages, Litzow told the panel. Those prospects are shaky, he said.

“The big picture for Bristol Bay red king crab is we continue to see poor recruitment year after year after year for more than a decade now. And without young crab coming into the stock, both males and females are at a historically low point, and we’re going to expect that will continue until we do see a substantial recruitment event,” he said.

A snow crab, in back, is displayed with a bairdi tanner crab, in front, in this undated photo. The crab species are related, but snow crab generally dwell in farther-north and colder waters. (Photo provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center)

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which manages Bering Sea crab fisheries in cooperation with federal regulators, is due to announce plans for the upcoming harvest season after the North Pacific Fishery Management Council reviews biologists’ information and makes its determinations.

Doug Vincent-Lang, commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, said the state will set the crab quotas soon. It is “unlikely” that any large harvest will be allowed, he said by email. Once a stock is overfished, recovery takes a long time, if it even happens, he said.

“So caution is warranted but must be balanced against the viability of the industry,” he said by email.

Snow crab and red king crab are marquee Alaska seafood species, and in normal years they command premium prices in the marketplace. While there are some other crab harvests that were conducted in Alaska, normally the Bristol Bay region of the Bering Sea is the biggest source of red king crab. Alaska’s snow crab population has also supported a lucrative fishery, but the crabs are dependent on cold-water conditions in the Bering Sea, as well as the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to the north. Last year’s red king crab and snow crab harvest cancellations resulted in direct losses of $287.7 million, according to state figures.

Litzow, in his presentation, noted that there are signs of long-term transformation in the crab populations’ marine environment.

While bottom-water temperatures in the red king crab habitat were normal this past year, with the usual pocket of cold lingering, there has been a gradual acidification of that water over the past two decades, he said. If that continues, it will become difficult for crabs to maintain their shells, he said.

Another concern is the boom in sockeye salmon abundance in the eastern Bering Sea, he said. Those sockeye may be preying on crab larvae, he said.

In the case of cold-dependent snow crab, there is speculation that gradual warming in the Bering Sea is leading to displacement by another crab population, he said.

While snow crab stocks are struggling, this year’s NOAA survey showed an abnormally high level of recruitment for bairdi tanner crab, a different but related species that generally thrives and in harvested in more southern waters, including in places like Kodiak.

The hypothesis, Litzow said, is that “longer term, we might see tanner crab filling the niche that snow crab previously occupied in the southeast Bering Sea as it warms.”

For crab fishermen and the coastal communities that depend on crab harvesting, the collapses have been devastating, said industry and local representatives.

“We’re operating in a new world. The crab world is no longer the world that we used to know,” Heather McCarty, representing the Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association, said on Wednesday in testimony to the North Pacific Fishery Council’s scientific and statistical committee.

She said the crab disasters have been especially hard on St. Paul, a Pribilof Island village that is home to one of the world’s biggest crab processing plants and has depended on crab harvests for most of its tax revenues. “There might not be a St. Paul that’s recognizable in 10 years,” she said.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.