Southeast commercial king crab season will remain closed
The fall red and blue king crab fishery has been opened only twice in the past decade, in 2005 and 2011.The numbers are still at historically low levels. Joe Stratman is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s lead crab biologist for Southeast. “The stock health in the survey areas ranged from below average to poor,” Stratman said. He and other biologists track two groups of king crab in Southeast: the legal biomass and mature biomass. Basically, the legal crabs are crabs that are big enough to be harvested in the commercial fishery. The mature biomass also includes crabs that are sexually mature but not big enough to be landed. “Both mature and legal surveyed biomasses declined on the average of 7 percent annually from 2001 to 2013,” Stratman said. Read the story here 18:06
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