The red king crab fishery is Alaska’s top shellfish fishery, and red king crabs are the second most valuable species in the state behind sockeye (red) salmon. Commercial king crab fishing in the Bering Sea began in the 1950s. By the 1960s, 190 vessels from the United States, Norway, Japan, and Russia collectively earned millions of dollars harvesting king crab near Kodiak Island, and Kodiak earned the nickname, “King Crab Capitol of the World.” U.S. fishermen resented competing with foreign vessels in U.S. waters, so in 1976, President Gerald Ford signed the Magnuson Act, prohibiting foreign vessels from fishing within two-hundred miles of the U.S. coast. This act eliminated competition from other countries but did nothing to reduce the number of U.S. boats chasing the valuable king crabs.
Record harvests for both red and blue king crabs occurred from 1978 through 1981, with $235 million earned during the 1978/79 season. By 1983, though, both red and blue king crab populations crashed. Biologists have proposed several explanations for the decline in king crab population, including over-fishing, a reduction in the number of crabs surviving until adulthood due to warmer waters and increased predation, and unintentional bycatch in other fisheries. Unfortunately, despite much stricter commercial fishing regulations over the past two decades, most of the depressed stocks have not recovered.
The federal government and the State of Alaska jointly manage the Bering Sea and Aleutian crab stocks, while the State of Alaska solely manages the Gulf of Alaska stocks. Biologists employ the “three S’s” to manage king crab fisheries. These are size, sex, and season. Harvested crabs must be males over a certain size, and fishermen can only take them during a specified season. The purpose of the size restriction is to allow male crabs to reach maturity and mate at least once. The sex restriction protects females for reproduction, and seasons are set to safeguard crabs during the mating and molting periods.
Before 2005, managers regulated the king crab fishery using a derby-style system. Under this system, managers opened the season for a set number of days, and anyone with a boat and crab pots could join in the fishery. This type of fishery was dangerous because small boats attempted to fish in treacherous weather for the opportunity of harvesting valuable king crabs. Also, the short season encouraged crews to work non-stop, resulting in fatigue and increased susceptibility to accidents on deck. After 2005, the fishery switched to an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) system, where an established boat owner was given an allotment he could fill at a more relaxed pace. While safer, the IFQ system put many crews out of work because the owners of smaller boats received such limited quotas, they could not even meet their operating expenses. When managers enacted the IFQ system, the crab fishing fleet shrank from over 250 to 89 boats. Alaska boat owners balked at the new system since many of the large fishing operations receiving the majority of the IFQs were based in Washington or Oregon. Alaskans complained the new law forced Alaskans out of a fishery in their own state.
Most king crab boats range between 40 and 200 ft. (12.2 – 61 m). In the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands, the average king crab boat measures over 100 ft. (30.5 m) in length. King crabs are fished using large traps called pots. Each pot weighs between 600 and 700 lbs. (272 – 317.5 kg) and are made from steel frames covered with nylon webbing. Crewmen bait a pot with chopped herring and then drop it to the bottom of the ocean where it soaks for two to three days. The crew releases the pots in long lines, known as strings, so they are easy to find and retrieve. Pots are pulled back onto the boat with the aid of a powerful hydraulic system. Once the pot arrives on board, the crew sorts the catch, returning undersized and female crabs to the ocean. Legal crabs are stored live in a holding tank until the boat returns to port to offload to a processor.
In my next post, I’ll describe some of the many dangers commercial king crab fishermen face, from hazards on deck to stability issues on vessels carrying heavy gear and crab pots.
My latest Alaska Wilderness Mystery Novel, Karluk Bones is now available! Grab a copy and take a trip to wild, mysterious Kodiak Island!
Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder
