SNOW CRAB

Unalaska could process St. Paul’s snow crab again next year, but officials won’t know for sure until October.Some fisheries specialists suspect there will be an increase in the total allowable snow crab catch limits, including Unalaska’s Natural Resource Analyst Frank Kelty. He said there may be more crab to harvest this upcoming season than last.“But I don't know if the increase is going to be enough that the operator up at St. Paul will want to operate again,” Kelty said at a recent Unalaska City Council meeting.

The city received federal relief last week after the 2021-22 king and snow crab collapses — funding that’s only now reaching local coffers.

For decades, the Bering Sea herring fishery has provided bait fish for crabbers.

Earlier this month, commercial snow crabs started hitting Unalaska’s docks again, for the first time in nearly three years. The Bering Sea snow crab fishery reopened in mid-October, after billions of the crab disappeared and the fishery was shut down in October 2022. This season’s first catch was delivered on Jan. 15. Opilio, or snow crab, is generally fished in the new year and into the early spring. The season runs through the end of May.

This season, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery opened for the first time in two years, and the first boats began delivering to processors on Jan. 15. But the Trident Seafoods facility in St. Paul — which the company calls the “largest crab processing plant in the world” — isn’t taking any crab.

Trident Seafoods’ St. Paul processing plant won’t open to take snow crab deliveries this season. But the Pribilof Island community will still see some economic benefits from the harvest, thanks to a new agreement between the cities of St. Paul and Unalaska. The Unalaska City Council unanimously approved a resolution at a special meeting on Jan. 3 that will allow snow crab, or opilio, that’s normally processed by Trident in St. Paul to come to Unalaska instead. St. Paul will receive the seafood taxes and fisheries business taxes associated with that portion of the harvest, like they normally would.

The Bering Sea’s biggest and most lucrative crab fisheries opened last week, and so far, fishing is looking good.“Fishing has been very good for the [Bristol Bay red king crab] fleet this season and the crab delivered so far has been of high quality — new shell, large size, good meat-fill,” said Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ethan Nichols.

Alaska processor Trident Seafoods announced Monday that it probably won’t be processing crab in the Pribilof Island community of St. Paul this season. That comes after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to reopen the snow crab or opilio fishery after a two-year closure. The state’s announcement on Friday surprised many fishermen. It was also a surprise to Trident.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

Scientists had previously linked the crash of the Bering Sea snow crab population to warming ocean waters. But a new study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Aug. 21 deepens the connection between human-caused climate change and the die off.