Alaskan snow crabs are canaries for worsening fishing woes

Alaskan crabbing is not for the faint of heart. The northeastern Bering Sea, home of the snow crab, is covered in sea ice from November to June. Winter storms, powerful tidal currents and 40-foot swells overlap hazardously with the crabbing season, but crews brave enough to work one of the country’s most dangerous professions can make tens of thousands of dollars in just a few weeks.

In the past, the payout was worth the risk. But Alaskan waters once teeming with king and snow crab now sustain a fraction of the catch they used to. In 1991, the peak of the Bering Sea snow crab fishery, captains harvested more than 328 million pounds of crab, according to data from the National Marine Fishery Service. But a catch that was worth $164 million in its heyday — more than $358 million in today’s dollars — has now fallen to zero.

“No one thought snow crab would disappear. Nobody. Even a year ago, we never would have expected a canceled season for snow crab,” said Adam Hosmer, one of the Baranof’s first mates. “[T]hey used to just be a dime a dozen. If you ask any of the old-timers, they used to be everywhere. Everywhere.”

Next: Human Elements: Researching how microplastics affect our oceans
For the first time in the fishery’s 40-year history, population collapse led the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to cancel the 2022-2023 snow crab season. As a result, declining numbers of snow crab are increasing ecological pressure on fishery managers and economic stress on crabbers already gutted by years of dwindling harvests.

ADVERTISEMENT
What happens to eastern Bering Sea crabs will have ripple effects in Washington, not just Alaska. The two northwesternmost states are connected by seafood: Since 2006, 57% of snow crab fleet vessels have been registered to Washington addresses. During the 2020-2021 season, 27 of that 60-boat fleet were registered in the Seattle metropolitan area. That same year, Bering Sea snow crabbing generated $62.6 million of revenue across King, Pierce and Snohomish counties and another $6.8 million elsewhere in Washington, according to a rebuilding plan drafted by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

In its October announcement, the Alaskan game department also canceled the Bristol Bay red king crab harvest for the second year in a row. Compounded with several poor harvests, the canceled crabbing seasons are estimated to cost the industry more than $287 million over the past two years, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a Seattle-based trade organization.

Snow crab typically makes up the lion’s share of the Bering Sea crab harvest, according to Cory Lescher, a science advisor for the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

Next: Labor shortages, heat bring tough tides for WA shellfish farm
“It's the meat and potatoes of the three (red king crab, snow crab, bairdi) primary crab fisheries,” he wrote in an email. “So when that season is closed, in tandem with red king crab, the situation becomes extremely dire.”Despite the grave circumstances, economic relief is far off for captains and their crews. Disasters within fisheries — the specific area and species being caught — are declared by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and only after that determination can Congress begin to appropriate bailout funds. In October, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested a disaster declaration for the 2022-23 snow crab season, but the fleet likely won’t see that money for years. Crabbers are still waiting for more than $12.9 million in disaster funds appropriated after the collapse of the 2019-20 bairdi crab season, according to Lescher.

Until this year’s canceled harvest, the Seattle-based Baranof supplied all of the crab catch sold by the Hosmer brothers’ retail business, the Whidbey Island Seafood Company. The Baranof is one of the last independent, at-sea processor/catcher crab boats, though they have diversified into cod over the past decade.

“It’s a hit, but you know, we’ll be able to survive,” said Adam Hosmer. “But there’s a lot of crab boats that are gonna struggle.”Sea changes in the crabbing industry
Crab was the Baranof’s main focus when Chuck began in the late ‘70s, but in recent years, it’s made up just 30% of the crew’s catch. The season for bairdi crab, just 3% of the Baranof’s catch, is expected to open on Jan. 15. But with a limit of 30 crab pots per boat, it isn’t worth the time and effort it would take the crew to convert from long-line gear, used to fish for cod, to crabbing.

Next: Human Elements: Using Indigenous knowledge to identify toxic shellfish
Last year the Baranof went out once with a single load of 175 crab pots. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Chuck said he and his crew would drop more than 500 crab pots across the Bering Sea, taking two or three trips to land them all onshore in a mad rush.