King Crab Catch
Fishermen last month harvested boatloads of giant red king crab from Bristol Bay, Alaska where stocks of the tasty crustacean have been increasing. Eighteen crabs harvested by fishermen aboard the FV Stormbird will end up not on the dinner table, but in research labs in Kodiak and Seward instead. The crabs, all females and each bearing hundreds of thousands of eggs in clutches beneath a hard flap on their underside, will participate in the second year of research aimed at understanding the scientific and technical complexities of hatching and raising large numbers of red king crab in a hatchery. The knowledge scientists gain will help policymakers decide whether to use hatcheries to rebuild red king crab in waters elsewhere in the state, where natural events have not succeeded in rebuilding king crab populations. Key among those places are the waters around Kodiak Island, once the scene of the state’s largest red king crab harvests. Fishermen there have not had a commercial red king crab harvest in the last 25 years. “Six crabs were shipped alive from Bristol Bay to the NOAA Kodiak Laboratory, and 12 crabs were delivered to the University of Alaska’s lab in Seward,” said Ginny Eckert, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist leading the studies. “Over the coming months, we and our partners in Kodiak and the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward will learn more about how to keep adults alive and healthy as they progress toward hatching their eggs in the spring.