Results from this year's Eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey suggest we could see substantial quota reductions in Alaska's two most valuable crab fisheries.
Bristol Bay red king crab
The biomass estimate for legal-sized male crab is 22,424 tons, down 17.6 percent from last year's estimate of 27,209 tons. (See Table 6 on Page 31 of the survey report.)
Bering Sea snow crab
The biomass estimate for legal males is 51,670 tons, down 27.8 percent from last year's 71,550 tons. (Table 19, Page 44)
Fishery managers will announce catch limits in the coming weeks. The crab fisheries open Oct. 15.
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3 comments:
I like king crab. That snow crab is definitely an inferior product.
The ADFG needs to update the antiquated trawl surveys they use to measure biomass of these crab stocks.
Bairdi is another huge hole that needs to be addressed after we get to the opilio numbers.
This has been a long time coming. Let's hope Commissioner Cotten and the new order over at ADFG will pull through in time to save the crab season.
The old abundance is down, so the science must be bad story....
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