As oceans warm and sea ice disappears, the ocean around Alaska is becoming inhospitable for the species. Snow crabs are cold-water species and found overwhelmingly in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius, Litzow says.
Litzow says human-caused climate change is a significant factor in the crabs’ alarming disappearance. “But it wasn’t overfishing that caused the collapse, that much is clear.” “We call it overfishing because of the size level,” Michael Litzow, the Kodiak lab director for NOAA Fisheries, told CNN. Hundreds of homes are already underwater, and this river is expected to stay flooded through Thanksgivingīut calling the Bering Sea crab population “overfished” – a technical definition that triggers conservation measures – says nothing about the cause of its collapse. “It’s a scary number, just to be clear,” Stichert said.ĭeland, Florida, area along the St. “So there were more removals from the population than there were inputs,” Stichert explained at Thursday’s meeting.īetween the surveys conducted in 20, he said, mature male snow crabs declined about 40%, with an estimated 45 million pounds left in the entire Bering Sea. Mark Stichert, the groundfish and shellfish fisheries management coordinator with the state’s fish and game department, said that more crab were being fished out of the oceans than could be naturally replaced. Officials cited overfishing as their rationale for canceling the seasons. The Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will also be closed for the second year in a row, the agencies announced. “So the shock and awe of many billions missing from the population is worth noting – and that includes all the females and babies.” “Snow crab is by far the most abundant of all the Bering Sea crab species that is caught commercially,” Daly told CNN.
Global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970, WWF report findsīut the actual numbers behind that decision are shocking: The snow crab population shrank from around 8 billion in 2018 to 1 billion in 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. View of a burnt area of forest in Altamira, Para state, Brazil, oin the Amazon basin, on August 27, 2019.
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