Tag: snowcrab

Study: Conservation Alone Can’t Ensure Sustainable Snow Crab Fishing Goals
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Study: Conservation Alone Can’t Ensure Sustainable Snow Crab Fishing Goals

A study released by Purdue University on the impacts of climate change on the global snow crab fishery concludes that given the uncertainties induced by climate change, conservation strategies alone are not sufficient to ensure sustainable fishery goals. The research, led by Jingjing Tao and released by the Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics, was published in the online publication Natural Resource Modeling on Aug. 5. The study estimates snow crab harvest functions using climate change indicators with unbalanced panel data of snow crab production from the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska, the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, the Sea of Japan and the Barents Sea, impacting Norway and Russia. Despite years of efforts by the Alaska Department of Fish and ...
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Trident Declines to Open St. Paul, Alaska Snow Crab Processing Facility
23Oct By Mark Edward NeroNo Comments
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Trident Declines to Open St. Paul, Alaska Snow Crab Processing Facility

A decision by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to reopen the snow crab fishery this year could have offered some economic relief to the Pribilof Island city of St. Paul, with a population of some 300 people, but now Trident Seafoods says its plant there won't reopen for economic reasons. Trident in mid-October confirmed plans to work with stakeholders and the community of St. Paul, after telling the North Pacific Fishery Management Council during its October meeting in Anchorage that there were many reasons for its decision to keep the plant closed. Unalaska public radio station KUCB noted that Shannon Carroll, Trident's director of public affairs and fisheries development, told the council that the low total allowable catch (TAC) set by ADF&G would mean a significant l...
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Study: Alaska Snow Crab Collapse Attributed to Starvation
1May By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Study: Alaska Snow Crab Collapse Attributed to Starvation

Federal fisheries researchers studying the dramatic crash of snow crab in the Bering Sea from 2018 to 2021 have determined that caloric requirements of the crab quadrupled when sea temperatures rose and the crab ultimately starved to death. Snow crabs will eat almost anything they can catch and break open with their claws, a diet that may include fish, shrimp, crabs, worms, clams, brittle starts, snails, algae and sponges, as well as anything dead they find. In 2018, there were more snow crab in the Bering Sea than ever seen before, Cody Szuwalski, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said. So the decline of roughly 10 billion crab from 2018 to 2021 was a precipitous unexpected collapse, he said in a ...
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NOAA Study: Snow Crab Likely Well Adapted to Projected Ocean pH Levels
15Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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NOAA Study: Snow Crab Likely Well Adapted to Projected Ocean pH Levels

Conclusions of a two-year federal study suggests that snow crabs are well adapted to projected increases in ocean acidification within the next two centuries, with no detectible effects on embryo development larval hatching or female calcification. Authors of the study, which was published Oct. 18 in the open access online journal Plos One, said that given the number of strongly negative effects they have documents over the years it is, in all honesty, a nice change to be able to report relatively good news in regard to how high the level of carbon dioxide will affect a commercial crab species. In both years of the study, starvation-survival, morphology, condition and calcium/magnesium content were assessed for larvae. The difference in response to high partial pressure of car...
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Federal Fisheries Council Slated to Act on Shellfish Issues
8Feb By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Federal Fisheries Council Slated to Act on Shellfish Issues

Snow crab and Norton Sound red king crab issues are among the issues before the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is meeting from Feb. 6-13 at the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle.  Major issues and final action items include the snow crab rebuilding analysis, a presentation on Norton Sound red king crab, potential of extending a temporary rule to waive vessel use caps in the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s Area 4 in the Bering Sea and measures to reduce the likelihood of data loss in the pot gear catcher/processor fleet in erring Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish fisheries. The meeting agenda posted online at https://meetings.npfmc.org/Meeting/Details/2975 includes action memos and related documents, plus written comments submitted in advance of the council meet...
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Mature Snow Crab Struggling in Eastern Bering Sea, But Immature Numbers Rising
14Sep By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Mature Snow Crab Struggling in Eastern Bering Sea, But Immature Numbers Rising

A NOAA Fisheries analysis of the summer survey of Bering Sea crab stocks has concluded that in the wake of consecutive years of record warm temperatures numbers of mature male and female snow crab are still down, but there’s a significant increase in immature snow crab abundance, NOAA revealed Sept. 2. “Depending on how many of these young crabs actually survive to adulthood, this could be one bright spot for the fishing industry in a few years,” said Mike Litzow, survey lead and director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Kodiak Laboratory. “We are providing these early results to stock assessment scientists and resource managers to inform science and management discussions that will occur over the next few months to identify fishery management measures for the 2023 fishin...
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