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:

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

supafish said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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.