50.3 billion dollars is the GDP of Alaska.
737,000 live in the state.
$68,249 per person
Nearly $5,000 above the US average, which is $63,500 per person.
Alaska, despite being in a very cold and low population area has a strong economy, with three major revenue sources.
Energy
1.5 million barrels of oil are produced per day, supporting 47,000 jobs.
Tourism
2.2 million tourist visit Alaska every year, the annual spend averages 2.5 billion dollars and 4.5 billion is the tourist economy on Alaska.
Fishing
5.7 billion dollars is Alaska’s fishing economy, 62,000 jobs in fishing and 3 billion dollars is exported of fish and seafood.
While not as high paying as oil, fishing is the largest single industry job wise in Alaska, making it unique to most states and employs about 8% of the population.
It’s also been historically the most stable industry in Alaska, where oil jobs are impacted heavily by prices, tourism isn’t recession proof and fishing has kept the most demand.
Despite that, for the first time a big blow is hitting Alaska, where Alaska Crab season is cancelled. A weird story, where for unexplained reasons, over a billion crabs are missing in Alaskan waters, coming to a 80%+ population cut and it’s unlikely any crab fishing will happen this year.
Alaska sells over 200 million dollars of crab yearly, being one of the largest single export items, hitting 6-8% of seafood/fish exports. There’s 350 active crab fisherman in Alaska, with 60 boats currently and the jobs attached to crabs hit 2-3,000 total.
All of that is at risk of not happening this year.
Before going further, it is important to mention that no marine biologist has confirmed an actual reason why this has happened.
Some theories.
- Fisherman were targeting areas of the sea that were more female crab rich, which caused instability in breeding and created the decline.
- Pollution in other parts of the world damaging food supply for crabs.
- Climate change and water temperature changes causing crabs to die or migrate out of Alaskan waters.
Which to be clear, it might not be climate change, but if it is, this could be one of the first examples in the US of an entire industry being wiped out over the impact of it.