An important update regarding Alaska snow crabs

and I read biologists opinion that red snapper are overfished in florida waters but we can go places and not be able to get a bait to a grouper because red snapper keep grabbing them. biologists tell me that snook populations ahven't rebounded in our area but I see, and catch, more snook than I ever have in 20+ years of fishing these waters in SW Florida. the same biologists in Alaska talking about global warming also dismiss the tons of trawler bycatch so maybe their opinions re climate warming are politically orientated or are just in support of them dismissing the bycatch volumes. The lack of a thermal on the bottom isn't killing off the king salmon and the halibut too.

Simple way to find out, severely cut the allowable trawler bycatch and enforce it with cameras recording on ships 24/7. Do it for 2 years and see what happens with the king salmon, halibut, and now crab stocks. First it was chinook, then halibut, and now crab stocks that are collapsing but they keep ignoring the bycatch problem while putting more and more restrictions on sport fisheries that bring in 100x more reveniue per pound than the trawling industry does. Our marine fishery management on a national level is corrupted by the commercial fisherman and the bigger the industry, the more pull they have. Trawlers generate the most revenue and they invest it in controlling the marine fishery boards

 

NOAA leaning heavily towards warmer water being the root cause of the die-off


Expert identifies "key culprit" in mass die-off of Alaska snow crabs (msn.com)

Erin Fedewa, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told AFP the shocking numbers seen today are the result of heatwaves in 2018 and 2019.
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In some good news, this year's survey saw significant increases in the immature crabs compared to last year — but it will take four or five years before the males among them grow to fishable size.

Following the heatwave years, temperatures have returned to normal, and "the hope is that leaving crabs untouched will allow them to reproduce, there'll be no mortalities, and we can just let the stock try to recover," said Fedewa.

Gabriel Prout, whose Kodiak Island fishing business relies heavily on the snow crab population, told CBS News that there needs to be a relief program for fisherman, similar to programs for farmers who experience crop failure, or communities affected by hurricanes or flooding.

 

even so, I do agree with you on trawlers generally. Not only are they not helping here, fish stocks are down in many places, and trawling tears up the bottom even on a good day. “Business needs” shouldn’t be a justification for awful resource management.

 

Dungeness crab dying off too. Wake up people, the signs are flashing

Dungeness crab die-off underway along US West Coast (msn.com)

NOAA Fisheries believes the combination of a lack of oxygen, harmful algal blooms, water temperatures and ocean acidification are playing a role in the animal’s disappearance.

Hypoxia, ocean acidification, harmful algal blooms, and marine heatwaves are already present on the Olympic Coast, and we need to understand how future events are likely to interact and affect resources in the sanctuary in the future," Jenny Waddell, research coordinator at Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, said in a statement. "Trends indicate that ocean conditions have worsened in the past two decades, affecting both the living resources and the human communities, including Coastal Treaty Tribes on the Olympic Coast, who depend on them."

 

Not crabs. Why can't you take mosquitoes instead?

 

Vote GOP in the midterms. Save the planet, pubs will have humanity as extinct as the crabs soon.

GOP - Burn more coal.
GOP - Who needs Ice.
GOP - Who needs air.
GOP - Climate what? LOL no such thing
GOP - Prayer will fix the Environment
GOP - The only good Tiger, Elephant, Blue Whale is a dead one, stuffed and in my living room.

Hate kids? Vote GOP!

 

Billions of Alaska snow crabs have starved to death because of ocean heat, study shows | CNN

Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death.

The study, published Thursday by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found a significant link between recent marine heat waves in the eastern Bering Sea and the sudden disappearance of the snow crabs that began showing up in surveys in 2021.

Snow crabs are cold-water species and found overwhelmingly in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius, though they can function in waters up to 12 degrees Celsius, according to the study. Warmer ocean water likely wreaked havoc on the crabs’ metabolism and increased their caloric needs.

The amount of energy crabs needed from food in 2018 — the first year of a two-year marine heat wave in the region — may have been as much as quadrupled compared to the previous year, researchers found. But with the heat disrupting much of the Bering Sea’s food web, snow crabs had a hard time foraging for food and weren’t able to keep up with the caloric demand.

Snow carb harvest has been canceled for the 2nd year in a row.

 

Riveting and sober read.

 

read that last night. guess we will need to supplement their diet to keep them alive long enough for us to harvest them. major shift in calorie intake requirements for a minor shift in temperature. king crab is opening for this season. chinook (king) salmon fishery continues to collapse while sockeye (red) seem to be doing very well and coho (silvers) are holding relatively steady. halibut are being wiped out by longliners and trawlers. but I just booked tickets for next June hoping that the sockeye runs continue to be good.

 

Tragic. What a terrible story to read.

 

Snow crabs in the Bering Sea = Canaries in a coal mine?

 

Like the song says, when the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.

 

Have learned a little more. It appears the adult crab may have starved to death as the warmer water destroyed the food web for the crab.

 

Seems like the First Nations could effect some changes to current halibut and crab and salmon management. Sustainable management must prevail.