Anchorage Daily News
October 1, 2005

Crabbing limits get a boost this season

By Wesley Loy

Bering Sea crabbing is one of Alaska's richest and wildest commercial fisheries, so dramatic that it rated its own Discovery Channel reality series this year called "Deadliest Catch."

In two weeks, however, the fisheries will sail into a whole new way of doing business, one that promises less drama and more safety in a trade known for its high rate of drownings and injuries.

And as a lucrative prelude to the new era, crabbers learned this week that state fishery managers will allow them to catch significantly more king, snow and bairdi crab this season than in recent years, thanks to the improving health of crab populations.

John Iani, a Seattle attorney and former crab boat deckhand, said he along with crabbers, crab processors and regulators worked for more than a decade to revamp the fisheries. The new plan will replace the traditional style of fishing -- every crabber racing to catch as many crabs as fast as possible -- with a system in which each boat will carry its own individual catch quota.

Like any change in Alaska's commercial fishing world, the revolution is hotly controversial on the docks of Kodiak, Dutch Harbor and Seattle, where much of the industry is based.

But proponents believe the new style of fishing will take away the pressure on crabbers to risk sometimes stormy seas to compete for crab or to overload their boats with heavy steel traps. They also say the new system will allow an oversized and economically distressed fleet to consolidate and will give crabbers and processors more time to treat the delicate catch with care.

"It's a huge, fundamental change," Iani said.

Late Thursday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced catch limits for the upcoming crab fisheries, which open Oct. 15.

The crab fleet will be allowed to catch a total of 16.5 million pounds of Bristol Bay red king crab -- giant orange spiders that often command the highest menu prices. That's a 17 percent jump over last season's catch, for which crabbers received an average $4.70 per pound at the docks.

The news for crabbers was even better regarding snow crab, a less pricey crustacean more likely to be found on a buffet line than in a fine restaurant. Crabbers will be allowed to take 33.5 million pounds, a 45 percent rise over last season's catch.

Fish and Game biologists also will let crabbers catch 1.5 million pounds of bairdi crab, which resembles the snow crab. The bairdi fishery has been closed since 1996 due to a weak population.

The combined catch could well exceed the $107 million the fisheries tallied last season, although much depends on prices still to be negotiated between the crabbers and the processors who buy their catch.

It also remains to be seen what impact the higher catch limits and new harvest style will have on consumer crab prices.

Rick Shelford, a Snohomish, Wash., crab boat owner, said he's happy to be moving to a new way of catching crab.

He's also pleased the catch limits are going up, though he believes government biologists are setting the limits too low for the number of crabs he believes are prowling the sea floor.

Tom Casey, a Seattle crab industry consultant, is more blunt, saying lots of crab is needlessly going uncaught. "We're feeding sand fleas with $4-a-pound king crab," he said, referring to a ravenous parasite common in the North Pacific.

Forrest Bowers, a Fish and Game biologist in Dutch Harbor who helps manage the Bering Sea crab fisheries, acknowledged that the catch limits are conservative, especially for stocks such as snow crab and bairdi crab that have been depressed for several years.

One reason managers can increase quotas now is that tight catch limits in recent seasons have helped rebuild the stocks, Bowers said. In the past, seasons of very high commercial catches sometimes were followed by complete fishery shutdowns -- a bust nobody wants, he said.

Although individual quotas promise to make crabbing in the rough and icy Bering Sea safer, the new fishing style brings trouble such as lost jobs for many in the industry.

Many crab boat owners plan to consolidate, "stacking" quota onto the best boats and leaving the others docked. Only 103 boats have signed up to participate in this fall's Bristol Bay red king crab fishery, compared with 251 last year.

With each boat carrying six or eight crewmen, the consolidation means hundreds of people who worked as boat captains and deckhands won't have a berth this season.

Iani, however, noted that crew jobs had become less and less viable in recent seasons, due to low crab quotas and fisheries that had shortened to as little as a week long. The new fishing style will create longer, less frenetic seasons and will support longer lasting, professional fishing jobs, he said.

Daily News reporter Wesley Loy can be reached at wloy@adn.com or 257-4590.