Baby blue King Crab Larva
Researchers aiming to ultimately rebuild lucrative commercial crab stocks say the project has now produced 1.75 million blue king crab larvae, joining nearly 1 million now-juvenile red king crab. “As larvae, they are about the same size as the reds were at that age, about the size of the head of a pencil,” says Celeste Leroux, an Alaska Sea Grant graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “These juvenile king crab, they look exactly like the adults, but they are just teeny tiny,” she said. “It’s like a miniature world.” For months now, Leroux has been watching over first the red king crab, and now also the blue king crab larvae at the Alaska King Crab Research and Rehabilitation Program at Seward’s Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery. The hatchery is owned by the Chugach Regional Resources Commission, a nonprofit Alaska Native organization established in 1984 to address issues of mutual concern of seven member Chugachmiut tribes. These include natural resources, subsistence, the environment and development of culturally appropriate economics projects that promote sustainable development of natural resources in the Chugach region. The cooperativ effort also involves the United Fishermen’s Marketing Association, the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community