Photo: A snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) pictured underwater in Canada. There were once billions of snow crabs in the Bering Sea, but the population has dramatically declined in recent years. (Image credit: LaSalle-Photo via Getty Images)
The Bering Sea’s snow crab population has been in decline over the last five years, but this season the population has collapsed.
Snow crabs in the Bering Sea once numbered in the billions. But after a recent and massive population crash the crabs have all but vanished from these waters — and they may not be coming back anytime soon.
In 2018, about 3 billion mature snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio) inhabited the Bering Sea along with roughly five billion immature crabs, the Seattle Times reported. But by late 2021, those numbers hovered around 2.5 million and 6.5 million, respectively — a loss of nearly eight billion crabs in just three years. In February, the National Marine Fishing Service issued an official overfishing notice for the population, and in early October, officials at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) made the difficult decision to cancel the season’s snow crab harvest for fear of wiping out the crustaceans altogether.
“Management of Bering Sea snow crab must now focus on conservation and rebuilding given the condition of […]
Full article: What made billions of snow crabs disappear from the Bering Sea?