Tuesday, November 5, 2024

A big cutback for Kodiak crab

The state has set a catch quota of 560,000 pounds for the Kodiak District Tanner crab fishery set to open at noon Jan. 15.

That's a big reduction from the 3 million pounds allowed last season.

6 comments:

  1. Not surprised. They should not have fished out the biomass. The concept of "catch them or they will just die" isn't working.

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  2. How do you fish out a biomass when you have a 20-pot limit, fishing hours from 8-6. And a preset GHL? And crab are like anything else. They don't live forever. Need some improvements on surveys for one thing.

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  3. How? You allow 110 boats to fish a 3-million-pound quota with 20 pots. Whatever they are doing isn't working.

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  4. The canneries should only accept crab from boats ported in Kodiak. There is not enough quota for all the Homer boats.

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  5. Crab have not been fished out. Kodiak currently only has one large year class they have been fishing on for the past 3-4 years.

    If you don't take them they would die off. They have a healthy spawning biomass of adult crabs that will continually pump out large amounts of larvae. Environmental conditions for those baby crab will allow them to thrive or die.

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  6. Draggers where hitting the crab grounds hard this year. Wiped out the Kiliuda and sandbox clean. From record crab catch to almost zero in a couple years.

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