Tag Archives: Red King Crab Savings Area
Council to reconsider red king crab closure options
Regulators are inching closer to closing areas of Bristol Bay to commercial groundfish fishing in an attempt to help conserve the depleted red king crab there. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has requested more information for a second evaluation of options for what to do about the Bristol Bay Red King Crab fishery. At its meeting from June 6-11 in Sitka, the council tweaked some of the options for closures and asked its staff to gather more information for another review at its next meeting. The current options issue annual closures for part of Bristol Bay to all commercial groundfish gear types, though one option excludes non-pelagic trawl. >click to read< 09:40
Decline of Bering Sea snow crab fishery demands swift action
Billions of crabs have vanished off the coast of Alaska, and with them, the fishing season for the Bering Sea crab fleet. This is grim news for a fleet that has fished crabs under science-based catch limits for years, providing healthy wild-caught seafood to the world and bringing jobs and income throughout Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. It’s also bad news for the communities of the Bering Sea, like St. Paul Island, where the economy is almost entirely dependent on the snow crab fishery. >click to read< 20:44
NPFMC wants more information on decline in king crab stocks
Two decades into the decline of Bristol Bay red king crab, with stocks now too low for a commercial fishery, the fight continues at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council over what protections to take for the crab in danger and how soon to do it. Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers had hoped that federal fisheries managers might put restrictions on groundfish fishing in the Red King Crab Savings Area, as well as other measures, during the NPFMC’s April meeting in Anchorage. Instead, the council voted to have staff prepare an expanded discussion paper for its October meeting that includes analysis of the impacts on annual or seasonal closures to pelagic trawl, groundfish, pot and longline gear in the BBRKA, including impacts on target catch, fishing timing relative to crab mating and molting, crab avoidance and other prohibited species catch and non-target species. >click to read< 11:27
