Alaska has canceled its snow crab season for the first time in its history, crippling a fishing industry reliant on catching and selling the crabs to U.S. restaurants.
The decision to cancel came after biologists reported that 90 percent of the crabs’ population had “disappeared” between 2018 and 2021, possibly because of warming waters in the Bering Sea, where about 65 boats usually take part in snow crab season each winter.
“It’s going to be very devastating to small businesses like myself and very devastating to the crab fleet,” Gabriel Prout, who runs his own fishing vessel business in Kodiak, Alaska, told the. Prout said his crew would typically bring in between 500,000 to 750,000 pounds of snow crabs each season. State officials say they hope the one-year pause will help snow crabs repopulate while scientists continue to investigate where they’ve all gone.
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