Alaskan snow crab is mysteriously disappearing

Scientists say climate change is to blame for the disappearance of snow crabs - the mainstay of income for Alaskan crab fishing fleets in the US.

Alaskan snow crabs are disappearing. There are many theories surrounding this mystery.

Some believe they have moved into Russian waters. Others say they die from predators or cannibalize themselves. The crabs may also have been hiding off the continental shelf, where scientists could not see them.

Many people even theorized that they were abducted by aliens, according to the Washington Post.

But after all, everyone agrees that the disappearance of the Alaskan snow crab is probably related to climate change. Marine biologists and seafood industry insiders fear the sudden disappearance of this luxury seafood item is an omen.

It sounded like an alarm that the fishing industry could quickly be wiped out in a tumultuous new world.

Scientists believe that climate change is the cause of the disappearance of snow crabs.

Alaskan snow crab fishing fleets are struggling

In 2018 and 2019, scientists announced amazing new snow crab news: Baby crab populations are growing around the ocean floor, presenting a potential source in the next fishing seasons.

Believing this, Gabriel Prout (32 years old), with his brothers Sterling and Ashlan, borrowed and spent $4 million to get the right to exploit a large number of crabs. It was also a time when many people in the Bering Sea were competing to jump into the fishing business, from the sailors responsible for tying the ship's lines to the owners.

Everyone believes that the snow crab season in 2021 will win big.

However, despite the previous optimistic signs, scientists have gradually noticed that the snow crab stock has decreased by 90%.

Against this backdrop, snow crab fishing quotas, the mainstay of income for Alaskan crab fleets, have fallen from more than 20.4 million kilograms to more than 2.5 million kilograms. But even so, the volume of commercial ships harvested did not reach that amount.

Meanwhile, in October 2021, the Alaska Department of Fisheries Resources completely canceled the harvest of king crab, for the first time since the 1990s.

'It was a fight,' says Prout. 'We're pulling up cages that are almost empty. We searched several miles of the ocean floor but couldn't even pull up 100 crabs. We are working hard but catching almost nothing."

For restaurateurs looking to source new supplies to make up for the shortfall from Alaska, there's another headache. The US government in March banned the import of Russian fish and seafood products, along with other consumer goods such as vodka and diamonds, in the expanded sanctions.

At Klaw, an up-and-coming restaurant in Miami, managing partner George Atterbury worked with Troika Seafood, a Norwegian seafood wholesaler, to bring back fresh red king crab from as far away as Finnmark, the northernmost county. of Norway.

'We keep king crabs in a separate facility with large tanks in the restaurant,' Atterbury said. 'Costs are therefore volatile, but we can only raise prices a fraction of the way for our customers'.

Snow crab, the mainstay of the Alaskan crab fleet, is limited to about 2.5 million kg in the 2021 fishing season. (Photo: Gabriel Prout).

Besides the demise of two of the three major crab stocks in Alaska, fishing for bairdi crabs, also known as leather crabs, is still doing well, but the industry is also shrinking. This poses challenges far greater than the culinary inconvenience that 1% of the population (the wealthiest people) face without king crabs on the table.

Because it is the main source of income for many of the 65 communities on the Bering Coast that are part of the West Alaska Community Development Quota Program. The program aims to build a fisheries-based economy and alleviate poverty by empowering western Alaskans to engage in fishing in the Bering Sea.

'I work in the Pribilof Islands for an Aleutian community of 450 people, which is heavily invested in crab quotas and can be caught in large numbers,' McCarty said.

On the island of St. Paul, Trident Seafoods has one of the largest crab processing plants in the world, employing up to 400 workers during peak snow crab season like February. However, in February of this year, everything was quiet.

'The entire community at St. Paul operates on a seafood tax. It used to bring in 85% of the revenue for the community,' she said.

An unprecedented extreme event in the Bering Sea

Heather McCarty, a fisheries consultant in Juneau, says it's an example of the impact of climate change on undersea resources.

But what happened to those snow crabs?

Bob Foy, director of science and research at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said they don't have enough data to say specifically what happened.

'What we do know is that we had an extreme heatwave in 2019, and we've seen a lot of schools of fish and crabs moving to areas that have never been before in history,' he said.

Earlier in 2021, scientists studying snow crabs also tried to find out what happened after the "catastrophic" summer survey results, which showed a more reduced proportion of juvenile females. 99% more than three years ago. The number of adult male and female crabs also decreased significantly.

As the seafloor warms, snow crabs appear to have moved much farther northwest and in deeper water than in previous years, according to federal and Alaskan scientists.

"The fishery is therefore also shifting to the northwest," said Bob Foy.

But the decline in large crab populations is not solely due to their migration out of the area. Crabs are a bottom-dwelling species, which means they crawl around on the ocean floor and aren't able to migrate as quickly as many finned fish.

'The biomass of crabs in the island of St. Lawrence hasn't changed much. That suggests there was a mass death event, either they moved into waters beyond our survey or into Russia's shelf,' Mr Foy said, but he seemed skeptical about the eventual possibility. .

'We believe we had a mass death event. This represents an extreme event that we have never seen in the Bering Sea," he added.

Metal crab cage ready to be dropped.

He said the crabs, perhaps due to their high sensitivity to the ecosystem, are like the 'coal mine canaries' to climate change.

'The canary in the coal mine' is an idiom that signals an impending danger. It comes from a real story about miners who often bring down canaries into coal mines, birds that are very sensitive to methane or CO that can leak in the mine. Once such a leak occurs, the canary usually dies before any other species, so miners are warned and left the mine immediately, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Trade Association, said the disappearance of crabs would affect workers and small family businesses the most.

For fishermen, they don't have the same kind of subsidies as 'crop insurance' for farmers. And although the Commerce Department is transferring nearly $132 million to Alaska because of the seafood disaster, it will take years for the money to reach those affected, Goen said.

'It's been a bleak time for this industry. A lot of people will sell their ships or sell their quotas to make a living," said Gabriel Prout.