Tag Archives: Fisherman Gabriel Prout
10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the Bering Sea. Scientists and fishermen are working together to understand why
The snow crabs’ population in the Bering Sea off the western coast of Alaska has fluctuated for decades. An increase in young crabs back in 2018 gave way to optimism that fishing would be good for years to come, but the hope was short-lived. Gabriel Prout and his family own the fishing vessel Silver Spray in Kodiak, Alaska. He said it was obvious something was wrong the last few years. The Bering Sea fishing grounds are usually covered in sea ice in the winter. But there wasn’t much ice, and they fished further north than usual. Finding snow crabs was still difficult. “It was just very poor fishing,” said Prout. “We searched for miles and miles and miles and really didn’t see anything.” >click to read< 10:15
Disaster requests for Bering Sea crabbers highlight difficulty of getting financial relief to fishermen
The current process of getting financial relief to fishermen is cumbersome and takes a long time, but Bering Sea crabbers are hoping the plight of the snow crab population might change the way financial relief is delivered to fishermen. Gabriel Prout is a second-generation Bering Sea crab fisherman from Kodiak; he owns the F/V Silver Spray with his dad and brothers. He said there’s one big problem with the current process for handing out fishery disaster funding. “If you’re going to have a fishery disaster request program, you should be able to make it so the money is getting into the hands of those affected very quickly,” said Prout. Right now, it takes years for money to reach skippers and their crews. >click to read< 13:44
Alaskans question fishery management as snow crabs disappear
The state, which has long dominated U.S. seafood production, is reeling after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week canceled the winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea for the first time in history Oct. 12. The department said the population of the popular snow crabs had dropped by nearly 90 percent from 2018 to 2021, plunging from 8 billion to 1 billion. In both cases, NOAA Fisheries said the declines were likely the result of climate change,,, Crabbers, however, said they had been led astray by inaccurate data and poor management decisions. “It’s going to be really devastating to kind of make ends meet and go forward here with our business,” said Gabriel Prout, 32, who runs a family fishing vessel business in Kodiak, Alaska. Last year, PEER filed a complaint under the Information Quality Act, alleging that NOAA Fisheries had paved the way for a collapse “by engaging in sampling bias and data falsification” that inflated population estimates and led to years of overfishing. >click to read< 16:59
