Alaska cancels snow crab season, threatening key economic driver
For the first time, crews in Alaska won’t be braving ice and sea spray to pluck snow crab from the Bering Sea.
For the first time, crews in Alaska won’t be braving ice and sea spray to pluck snow crab from the Bering Sea.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the snow crab season earlier this week after a catastrophic population crash of the sizable crustaceans. The red king crab season was canceled for the second year in a row, making it a two-pronged disaster for Alaska’s economy and for those whose livelihoods rely on crab.
“It’s going to be life-changing, if not career-ending, for people,” said Dean Gribble Sr., a 63-year-old crab boat captain who has fished for “opies” — snow crab — since the late 1970s. “A lot of these guys with families and kids, there’s no option other than getting out. That’s where the hammer is going to fall — on the crew.”
Alaskan ecosystems — which are warming faster than other regions because of their proximity to the North Pole — have been roiled by marine heat waves and other impacts made more likely by climate change.
Scientists are still evaluating the cause or causes of the snow crab collapse, but it follows a stretch of record-breaking warmth in Bering Sea waters that spiked in 2019. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the warmer waters likely contributed to young crabs’ starvation and the stock’s decline.
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