Alaskan officials have canceled the upcoming snow crab season, due to population decline across the Bering Sea.
The fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest would not happen, while the winter harvest of smaller snow crab has also been canceled for the first time.
The causes of the population collapse are being researched but likely include increased predation and stresses from warmer water, which the US Environmental Protection Agency said might have prompted the crabs to shift away from coasts.
Photo: Bloomberg
“In the Bering Sea, Alaska pollock, snow crab and Pacific halibut have generally shifted away from the coast since the early 1980s... They have also moved northward by an average of 19 miles,” the federal agency said.
The Alaska closures reflect conservation concerns about both crab species following bleak summer population surveys. The decisions to shut down the harvests came after days of discussions among Alaska state biologists and senior officials, who faced crabbers’ pleas for at least small takes to be allowed.
“These are truly unprecedented and troubling times for Alaska’s iconic crab fisheries and for the hard-working fishermen and communities that depend on them,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association.
“Second and third-generation crab-fishing families will go out of business due to the lack of meaningful protections by decisionmakers to help crab stocks recover,” she added.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) released a statement saying that “management of Bering Sea snow crab must now focus on conservation and rebuilding given the conditions of the stock.”
Bering Sea snow crab populations declined after a 2019 warming that scrambled the broader marine ecosystem. Last year’s snow crab harvest of 2.54 million kilograms was the smallest in more than 40 years.
Within the limits of a federal management plan, Alaska determines how many crab are caught each year.
A scientific model of the snow crab population reviewed by the federal North Pacific Fishery Management Council last week indicated there might have been enough this year for a small harvest.
However, Ben Daly, an ADF&G research coordinator, said the model has struggled to account for the dramatic population decline after the 2019 warming, and state officials were concerned it might not be accurate.
“We have extreme conservation concerns about the population. We have serious doubts about the model,” Daly told the Associated Press.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS