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From the Editor: Borealization
The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest due to population declines was a shock to the state’s fishing industry last fall, but in the decades to come, the ocean conditions that triggered the snow crab crash and harvest closure are expected to become common.
This is according to according to several scientists who gave presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium that took place in late January.
Mike Litzow, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist based in Kodiak, Alaska said that the conditions that triggered the crash can be expected about once every seven years. By the 2040s, those conditions can be expected to occur one out of every three years, he said.
Litzow said that the cause of the snow crab disaster is something called “b...