Deadliest Catch is at risk as crabbing season gets cancelled after billions go missing Mon 17 O

Snow crab fishing season in Alaska’s Bering Sea has been canceled for the first time in history. The Discovery Channel show, Deadliest Catch, dramatizes the career and shows fans what it’s like to be a fisherman in Alaska, but it seems they won’t get to see much more since the latest news. 

Aside from crab fishing season being canceled, Bristol Bay’s red king crab fishery will also be closed, for the second year in a row. Both decisions follow shellfish surveys that revealed startling population collapses.

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Crabbing season has been canceled for the first time in history 

Miranda Westphal, a biologist at the state Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), said to Alaska Public Media that between 2019 and 2021, snow crab numbers in the Bering Sea fell by about 90%. 2022 counts have dropped even further. The biologist explained:

In 2021 when they surveyed, we saw the largest decline we’ve ever seen in the snow crab population, which was very startling, I think, for everyone.

The ADF&G announced that now they must focus on the management of Bering Sea snow crabs as well as their conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock.

For the first time ever, snow crabbing season in #Alaska is completely canceled due to plummeting #snowcrab populations. We’ve gone from 8 billion snow crabs in 2018 to <1 billion in 2022. This is what #globalclimatechange looks like. A $200M industry wiped out.

— Casey Shultz (@alaskacasey) October 16, 2022
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Fisherman are going to be “hurting” for the next year

The state’s crab fishing industry, dramatized in Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, will severely struggle as a result of the latest news. One of the fishermen, Gabriel Prout, told Alaska Public Media:

People are really going to have to make some hard calls here, whether that’s…selling their vessels [or] looking for other opportunities in other fishing sectors which is few and far between.

He went on to say that, “fishermen are really going to be hurting the next year.” Another fisher, Dean Gribble Sr., told NBC News that the canceled season would be “life-changing, if not career-ending for people.”

In 3 years 90% of these crabs (about 1 billion) died out. Crab fishing in Alaska was a dangerous and highly paying job. I have a few friends who did this (when they were younger) during the crabbing season to pay for their travel for the rest of the year. https://t.co/JufUMAS4ys

— adityadickysingh 🇮🇳 (@adityadickysin) October 15, 2022
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What caused the crab crash?

According to Gizmodo, In 2020, NOAA valued Alaska’s snow crab harvest at more than $US101.7 ($141) million. This year, it will be $0.00.

The exact cause of the crab crash is currently unknown, however, the state is currently investigating it. But Westphal and others think climate change is likely to blame.

The Bering Sea has endured record-breaking, massive marine heat waves in recent years, with a particularly catastrophic one known as “the blob” occurring between 2014-2016, which is very likely to have played a huge part in the current crab crash.

Getting science-y now, snow crabs and other sea life native to the waters around Alaska are adapted to icy cold temperatures. So, when the heat rises, they can’t cope. One of the biggest issues is deoxygenation. Warmer water simultaneously holds less oxygen and leads to animals needing more oxygen, because of increased metabolic demand.

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