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A comment on Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs. Parent comment

Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by whyenot on Friday October 14, 2022 @03:51PM (#33208070)
No, it's not that simple. The snow crab fishery is pretty highly regulated and considered to be sustainably harvested (by NOAA, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, others). As mentioned in an another article [1] from August on the recent disappearance, there were large numbers of juveniles in 2018 and 2019. Something else is going on. Overfishing certainly may play a role, but something else is likely the primary factor.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/21/alaska-cr...

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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by insane_dreamer on Friday October 14, 2022 @04:24PM (#33208406)
> considered to be sustainably harvested (by NOAA, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, others)

maybe they considered incorrectly, based on historical data that doesn't reflect recent conditions

also possibly that regulations are being flaunted by bad actors

it could seem improbable that either of those would lead to a sudden catastrophic decline, but many systems do experience a point where what had been a linear decline suddenly craters in a non-linear fashion

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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by PuppyTailWags on Friday October 14, 2022 @04:31PM (#33208472)
In previous collapses such organizations sounded the alarm well before. Something else is happening.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by barkingcat on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:44PM (#33209673)
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2021/10/09/alaska-snow-crab-...

The alarm has been sounding for at least a season, maybe even more.

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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by llbeansandrice on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:57PM (#33209783)
By contrast cod that folks keep referencing collapsed 90% over _30 years_. An issue with a single season does not suggest that the regulations weren't strict enough. They now do need to become more strict as a reaction to the population but fishing is not the only pressure on a population and I find it difficult to believe that snow crab would be fished basically to extinction in < 700 days
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by hedgehog on Friday October 14, 2022 @04:24PM (#33208407)
I don't know much about snow crab but Dungeness and various oysters in the Pacific Northwest US are threatened by rising ocean acidity caused by increased CO2. Warmer water is also allowing green crabs to take hold. Farther south urchins have killed off a lot of kelp forest in a way that seems not to self-correct. Easy to imagine there are similar problems all over the ocean.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by soperj on Friday October 14, 2022 @04:42PM (#33208590)
Sea urchins are a problem everywhere in the pacific, and that's because their main predator (sea otters) were nearly wiped out.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by swhalen on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:26PM (#33209528)
I think it's just the western coast of North America that has this problem, rather than the entire Pacific. For example in New Zealand, which is in the Pacific, there were never any sea otters. Urchins, regarded locally as a delicacy, are not particularly abundant.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by greggsy on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:34PM (#33209600)
Crown-of-thorns starfish, on the other hand, are a very serious problem in Australia
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by rileyphone on Friday October 14, 2022 @04:37PM (#33208535)
At least the urchin problem is caused, in part, by the mysterious sea star wasting disease - a disbiosis of their microbial layer that leads to rapid death. Sea stars are the natural predators of the urchins, and with their disappearance, the urchins flourish and take down the kelp.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by steelframe on Friday October 14, 2022 @05:52PM (#33209253)
> Sea stars are the natural predators of the urchins, and with their disappearance, the urchins flourish and take down the kelp.

No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the the urchins.

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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by kfrzcode on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:06PM (#33209373)
Things that are easy to imagine aren't always easy to prove
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by WalterBright on Friday October 14, 2022 @05:14PM (#33208870)
Wildlife populations are a chaotic system, i.e. not steady state, even without any influence by humans.

It's still worth investigating, however.

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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by marcjuul on Friday October 14, 2022 @05:54PM (#33209270)
Absolutely not an expert here and would love to be corrected but my poorly informed personal impression is that the whole idea of a sustainable amount of fishing and whether all species even have a number that is safe to harvest (especially given that no species exists in isolation), let alone what that number is, is on fairly shaky grounds scientifically. Meaning that a lot of this is guesswork based on too little information and "doing something is better than doing nothing" compromises with the fishing industry. If a species population has appeared to be stable for x number of years with y amount of fishing, does that mean that it's sustainable? Indefinitely? Given other changes in ecosystem and environment?
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by colordrops on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:33PM (#33209588)
Thank you. The problem with a lot of the discussion around this topic is that most people are heavily biased as they derive great pleasure from consuming these animals, and so certain ideas and theories are ignored or under represented.
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Re:Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of a... by barkingcat on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:43PM (#33209666)
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2021/10/09/alaska-snow-crab-...

Notice that this article is from 2021 for last year's catch.

"The 2021 fall harvest of Bristol Bay red king crab, another important source of revenue for that fleet, was canceled for this year because of too few females."

The collapse has been happening for years. This year it's just another species. Species by species it's going to collapse. Next will be shrimp and krill.

Don't be surprised when the salmon runs collapse too, because for 3 years now every single year has been a 90% decline.

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