The Alaska Department of Fish and Game today announced the total allowable catch (TAC) for a couple of important Bering Sea crab fisheries.
The 2013-14 TAC for Bristol Bay red king crab is 8.6 million pounds, up 9.5 percent from last season.
The TAC for Bering Sea Tanner, or bairdi, crab is 3.1 million pounds. The fishery was closed last season.
The crab fisheries are scheduled to open Oct. 15.
However, the federal government shutdown could delay the start of the general fisheries.
That's because the National Marine Fisheries Service must issue individual fishing and processing quotas. And almost everyone in that agency is on furlough.
Ten percent of the crab TACs are reserved for harvest under the Community Development Quota program. The state issues CDQ permits, which therefore will not be delayed.
According to Deckboss, the TAC changed by 9.5%, from approximately 7.85 million to 8.6 million pounds. It is logical to assume that the source population increased by about the same amount, say 10%. But the NMFS Bristol Bay survey cannot provide a population estimate whose precision is better than 20-30% either side of the mean estimate. With regard to the precision of NMFS’ survey estimates, a change of some 10% (increase or decrease) from one year to the next is well within the realm of estimate error and is not statistically significant. It is simply noise and should not be interpreted as a real change in the underlying population. So why change the TAC?
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