The Dungeness crab season in the eastern Bering Sea in the U.S. state of Alaska is reportedly going well as officials report crab pots “stuffed” with crab.
Historically, Alaska’s Dungeness crab fishery has been relatively small, and largely overshadowed by the red king crab fishery. In 2004, for example, harvesters caught 12.5 million pounds of red king crab worth USD 105 million (EUR 96 million), versus 3.2 million pounds, of Dungeness crab worth USD 11 million (EUR 10 million), according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
That trend has steadily been shifting over time. In 2019, fishermen caught 2.7 million pounds of red king crab worth USD 51 million (EUR 46 million), compared to a 4-million-pound catch of Dungeness worth USD 31 million (EUR 28 million). Then, in 2021 Alaska canceled the winter red king crab fishery, while harvesters caught 4.9 million pounds of Dungeness crab that year, worth USD 69 million (EUR 63 million).
Now, fishermen in the Eastern Bering Sea in the North Alaska Peninsula District are reporting full pots of Dungeness crab, even as the red king crab season remains closed.
“The pots that we’re seeing coming out of this fishery are absolutely stuffed with crab,” Ethan Nichols, who works for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told Alaska Public Media. “Like, you don’t even know how many crabs can fit in a pot.”
The fishery boomed last year and is now the largest Dungeness crab fishery in the state, Nichols said.
The reason for the Dungeness boom and the red crab bust is likely caused by the same thing, according to Nichols – climate change. The crab population crashed in 2021 amid an “unusual mortality event.” Surveys at the time showed a 99 percent drop in immature female population and substantial drops in mature crabs compared to three years prior.
Scientists have at least partially attributed the collapse to warmer waters in the region, which could be pushing crab populations further north.
Regardless of the root cause, the Dungeness crab fishery has suddenly attracted more attention – which led some proposals for new limits on the fishery to avoid overharvesting. The Alaska DF&G set a limit for the first time ever this year, limiting vessels to a number of pots depending on how many register for the fishery. This year, vessels can deploy a maximum of 500 pots apiece.
Nichols said the boom in the fishery is still too new for any trends to be extracted from the data.
“I’m hoping that as we have more years of consistent harvest in the fishery, we’ll have a better idea of the full distribution of crab in the area, and if this is just a fluke for a couple of seasons, or if this can be a more consistently large Dungeness fishery," he said.
While fishermen are catching more crab than they have in the past, earnings haven't jumped at the same rate, as the price for Dungeness crab is relatively soft. As the season started, fishermen reported getting USD 2.10 (EUR 1.92) per pound for crab – USD 0.50 (EUR 0.45) lower than they got at the start of the season last year, Alaska Public Media reported. The low price offering reportedly led many fishermen to skip the fishery alltogether – 146 permit holders registered to fish, 50 fewer than in 2022.
Photo courtesy of Maxim Gorishniak/Shutterstock
