The Norton Sound winter king crab fishery is scheduled to close on Tuesday, and it will end on a happy note.
"Congratulations to Norton Sound fishermen on one of the best winter crab seasons in history," says this announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "The commercial catch so far this season of over 8,500 crabs is second only to the first winter commercial season in 1977-78 when 9,625 crabs were caught."
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8 comments:
How many commercial fishermen caught that "second only to the first winter" catch?
This might be the winter crab season that hurts the summer crab season.
Let's see some data from those crab "tags" and if there is a connection then the people of the Norton Sound are playing tag from one end of the sound to the other.
This fishery is heavily subsidized by the CDQ program. By the time the crabs get to the market, they will be so expensive that they would most likely end up in storage until freezer burn takes over then off to the dump they go.
According to last week's "The Nome Nugget", "Forty-one permit holders registered for the 2011-2012 fishery" and for the record catch totaling "8,934 crabs", the fishers were paid $6.50 a pound, "subsidized by the CDQ program".
So if the average weight of a Norton Sound crab is at least 7 pounds, that's a total of 62,538 pounds caught x $6.50 = $407,000 divided by 41 = approximately $10,000 per fisher before expenses, which is at least 1/3 of the gross making a possible take home of at least $6-7,000 for all that hard, hard work.
The fishery makes it possible for those fishers to buy a new snowmachine for next season and that's about it.
It isn't as rosy as it is made out to be.
It sure beats milking the cow and paying yourself by way of pull tabs eh Tim.
Hey Eh, I'm not Tim.
So, by the time the Norton Sound winter crab catch gets to the market, NSEDC will sink nearly a million dollars into this fishery. In the end, the guys getting the bigger chunk of these Public Monies are the year round managers and perhaps the transportation carriers. A handful of men compared to '41' crabbers will get a bigger chunk of these monies belonging to the people, that's "milking the cow"!
A half of million dollars to 41 crabbers and almost 6 million a year for Administration. The balance is way off. Enriching a handful on the taxpayers dime. There are laws against this trust abuse.
Some people say that the summer King Crab in the Norton Sound are better eating than the winter King Crab. ADF&G in Nome has been collecting those crab tags for several years. Where is the data? The purpose of collecting data is to help make good decisions on managing resources. Data is a good check and balance resource to let the public know if the state agency is making good decisions on behalf of the people.
"Collecting those crab tags" gives the impression to the public that some scientific oversight is being done as part of the resource management.
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