The snow crab crisis in Alaska first began in early 2022, after biologists discovered an estimated 10 billion crabs disappeared — a 90% plunge in the population.
Fishermen might not have PhDs but they’re not idiots. The snow crab population didn’t just vanish over night, it’s been falling year by year. Not to mention there are size limitations to legally harvesting snow crabs to keep the population sustainable, and being a fisherman necessitates a minimum degree of awareness of crab sustainability whether it’s for legal or practical reasons.
It did vanish overnight!!! Go read up on how fast they disappeared. Yes numbers have been declining but we hit a catastrophic temp event that killed millions of crab.
They starved. It doesn’t take long for a crab to starve.
It’s worse than that. The snow crab population is close to 10% of what it was in 2009. The point is, this isn’t the first time there was a major decline in the snow crab population. It’s been dramatically but consistently plummeting over the last decade.
The crab population only ‘halved’ in 2019 because of a small resurgence in the population in 2018. In reality, the crab population is back on its usual course of being completely screwed by climate change.
Size limits just puts selective pressure to make the species smaller overall. It does nothing to curb overfishing since they’ll just recalibrate their acceptable size limits.
Fishermen might not have PhDs but they’re not idiots. The snow crab population didn’t just vanish over night, it’s been falling year by year. Not to mention there are size limitations to legally harvesting snow crabs to keep the population sustainable, and being a fisherman necessitates a minimum degree of awareness of crab sustainability whether it’s for legal or practical reasons.
It did vanish overnight!!! Go read up on how fast they disappeared. Yes numbers have been declining but we hit a catastrophic temp event that killed millions of crab.
They starved. It doesn’t take long for a crab to starve.
It’s worse than that. The snow crab population is close to 10% of what it was in 2009. The point is, this isn’t the first time there was a major decline in the snow crab population. It’s been dramatically but consistently plummeting over the last decade.
The crab population only ‘halved’ in 2019 because of a small resurgence in the population in 2018. In reality, the crab population is back on its usual course of being completely screwed by climate change.
Size limits just puts selective pressure to make the species smaller overall. It does nothing to curb overfishing since they’ll just recalibrate their acceptable size limits.