The "Dead" Catch

Source: Starlight Seafood

I admit that, at one point in time, I was a great fan of the television show, Deadliest Catch. I did not care so much about the drama between the crews of various vessels. I also did not care about the competition over who would catch the most crab. All I cared about was the crab. I watched the shows to see trap after trap of king crab and snow crab being raised from the water. Yet, as the Deadliest Catch continues with season 18, not so much can be said for the crabs.

Recently, the Alaska's Department of Game and Fish announced that it was cancelling the snow crab season. The department made this decision based upon a recent survey by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ("NOAA") of the Bering Sea Floor.  NOAA found that the population of snow crabs had declined from 11.8 billion in 2018 to just 1.9 billion in 2022. Those figures represent a population loss of nearly 84%.

To put this loss into perspective, consider the following. The decline of the snow crab population over the course of four years - 9.9 billion - exceeds the total number of humans walking the planet Earth (approximately 7.98 billion). 

Source: BBC

Snow crabs are not the only creatures suffering significant population losses. For example, a few weeks ago, there were reports of 65,000 pink and chum salmon dead in the Heiltsuk territory of British Columbia. The smaller size of this population loss does not mean a smaller impact. It is estimated that the death of these fish, before they could reach their destination upstream, may result in the loss of an entire generation of pink and chum salmon in that area.

Similar reports of the decline of salmon have been reported in Alaska. For example, NOAA has reported the decline of chum and chinook salmon in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. The declines have led the Alaskan state government to develop an emergency plan to address the "salmon disaster" in those areas. While that is a step in the right direction, it should be noted that, earlier this year, there were federal disaster declarations for 14 Alaskan fisheries.

Reactive declarations of disasters, while necessary, are not sufficient by themselves to address these issues. We need to address the root causes for the losses of salmon and snow crab, as well as a lot of other fisheries around the world. One way is to manage the harvesting and consumption. Again, this is an important step, but, even if we stopped eating snow crab or salmon, the populations still remain at risk. They will always remain at risk until we address the fundamental factor underlying these losses ... climate change. Until we address the warming of our planet, the threat to these fisheries will remain.

Source: G Captain

The warming of our planet, along with the resulting loss of ice at the North Pole, has caused the warming of the waters in the Pacific northwest. NOAA has been researching the impact of climate upon the populations of fish and other marine life. That research posits that a significant heat wave in 2019 across the northern Pacific, which was most likely the cause of climate change, had a disastrous impact  upon the now crab population. Snow crabs need cold water to thrive and grow. Warmer water leads to more disease, like bitter crab disease, and more predators, like the Pacific Cod, which feast on juvenile crabs. Warmer waters also lead to increases in metabolism, which could starve the crabs if they are not able to find enough food. 

Similarly, warming waters - as well as drought - are contributing to the stress on salmon populations. Warming waters cause the fish to grow more quickly. This increase in growth requires more food for the salmon in order to survive. Reports in some of the fisheries revealed that, in warm years, salmon appeared thinner and less fit. Those conditions could have resulted from the increased metabolic rates, and reduced prey for the salmon. Climate change has also resulted in droughts across the western portion of North America, which has resulted in lower water levels that make it more difficult for the salmon to swim upstream. 

Many people have written, lectured and taught about what we can do to respond to climate change. But, in order to take any such action, we need to admit that there is a problem. To admit to a problem, we need to have a good understanding of the issue and its implications. Until next time....