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Thank you snow crab population in the Beri Sea has all but disappeared in r years, threatening the livelihoo many Alaskans.

It was a very poo fishing.

We search for miles and miles and miles and really didn' anything.

We'll look at research what might have happened and dis the effects of the collapse righ now on Alaska Insight.

Good even Decades the crab fishery in Alaska has been a reliable busin for vessel owners and crew.

But recent years, the effects of cli change and other ocean stressors affected that reliability.

Tonig we'll learn about what may be in store for the future.

But before get to that discussion, we'll st off with some of the top stories the week from Alaska Public Medi collaborate of statewide news ne in a pair of closed or meetings members of the Alaska legislatur Tuesday, Governor McDonnell said is prepared to introduce a state sales tax as part of a long term budget plan for the state.

The t bill, if introduced, would be th latest in a series of tax propos The session there's another sale bill, an income tax and two bill that would make changes to the state's oil tax structure.

Detai are still scarce.

The governor's potential proposal.

But with onl few weeks left in session, any t proposals in the legislature fac uphill battle in passing this ye the Anchorage police department announced Thursday it will move forward with getting body camera officers despite an ongoing disp with the police officers union o details of the department's prop camera policy.

This announcement comes two years after voters app a one point eight dollars millio levy to purchase the cameras and same week as a lawsuit from the nonprofit Alaska Black Caucus ov the delay in implementing Anchor police chief Michael Kerle said Thursday the department's announcement had nothing to do w the timing of the lawsuit.

And i statement, officers Union Presid Darral Evans said they would con working on the policy with the department.

Alaska Black Caucus President Celeste Hodge Growden Thursday she's happy to see move but would also like to see a new timeline for implementation of t cameras.

The Kenai Peninsula Bar will pay more than two hundred t five thousand dollars to settle harassment suit filed last fall against former borough mayor and former gubernatorial candidate Charlie Pierce.

The announcement comes eight months after Pearce resigned and six months after hi former assistant, Pamela Wastell sued him for repeated sexual harassment and sued the borough failing to protect her.

The Boro Assembly has been tight lipped a most details of the suit, but in meeting this week, they voted to public the amounts that it and P has settled to pay.

In a stateme sent by her lawyer Tuesday, Wast said she was pleased by the settlement, but added There's no enough money in the world to go through what she had.

You can fi full versions of these stories a many more on our website, Unalas Public Dawg.

Or by downloading t Alaska Public Media app on your now on our discussion for this evening, the Bering see snow cra season was canceled this year af billions of crabs disappeared, devastating a commercial fishing industry worth 200 million.

And livelihoods of those who depend now, fishermen and researchers a working to figure out what happe and they think warming ocean wat caused by climate change is the culprit.

from Kachemak and Kodia Kirsten Dobroth reports.

The sno crab population in the Bering Se the western coast of Alaska has fluctuated for decades, an incre in young crabs back in twenty eighteen led to optimism that fi would rebound.

But the hope was lived.

It was just very poor fis And we search for miles and mile miles and really didn't see anyt Gabriel Prout and his family own silver spray in Kodiak, Alaska.

says it was obvious something wa wrong the last few years, the Be Sea fishing grounds are usually covered in sea ice in the winter there wasn't much ice and they f further north than usual.

Findin snow crabs was still difficult.

lack of sea ice was a red flag f scientists like Erin Fedewa, who studying the conditions in the B Sea that led to the mass die off That was an immediate potential smoking gun when we saw this Arc species suddenly in decline, den because the ice is an important ingredient in the snow crabs, life-cycle in the winter.

It accumulates on the water surface during the summer, the ice melts sending cold, dense water sinkin the ocean floor.

where it hovers above freezing.

at around 35 deg Scientists call it the cold pool it's a sanctuary for young crabs Warmer temperatures can lead to starvation and higher rates of disease at the Kodiak Fisheries Research Center State and federa researchers are piecing together all those factors contributed to crabs collapse tanks filled with seawater pumped in from the bay, replicate conditions on the seaf and then we can hold the differe portions of the same population say, five degrees Celsius, eight degrees Celsius.

And we can begi look at the response of those sp once they're in these warmer temperatures.

Scientists use the to study how different temperatu levels affect the crabs developm how fast they grow and how quick they die.

in separate, smaller t researchers hook up monitoring equipment to individual crabs an track their breathing in differe conditions.

They also take blood samples.

We know increases in temperature increase, metabolic of fish and crab, causing them t need to eat more and more in a shrinking cold pool.

That means crabs pushed into a smaller spac fighting for less food across th hall from the federal lab, Ben D is also trying to figure out how smaller cold pool affects crabs the Bering sea.

So that's part o what we're doing now is trying untangle the what happened part.

That's only half of the challeng The other half of the challenge what do we do next?

Daley and hi team have been tagging crabs in wild with satellite transponders will track their movements over He's hoping the tags provide mor detailed information about the distribution of crabs across the pool.

And this winter, a group o state and federal researchers ar heading out on the silver spray continue studying Bering sea cra populations outside the lab.

Gab Prout and his family are gratefu the work.

The many fishers that on snow crabs for income are lef with more questions than answers Right now, we're sitting tight t to count our pennies and figure how to make a way forward.

Scien say it will likely take years be the snow crab population rebuild another marine heat wave hits th Bering Sea, it could be even lon But they're hopeful that lessons learned from snow crabs might pr insight into how other marine sp handle climate change.

As the oc warms in Kodiak.

I'm Kirsten Dob joining me tonight to discuss wh the future of the snow crab fish may be is Gambell Prote, the own the fishing vessel Silver Spray, featured the story you just saw and Erin Fedewa, a fisheries biologist with the National Ocea and Atmospheric Administration o NOAA.

Welcome both of you.

Thank much for being with us.

This eve So, Gabriel, I want to start wit you.

How is your business faring after such a sudden closure?

You third generation fisherman in yo family family business.

But as multigenerational business, how difficult is it for you to stay viable?

And what do you hear fro less well-established vessel own people new to this work?

Yeah, t you, Lori.

Overall, everyone Hug and the Bering Sea crab fleet is facing a tough time right now.

primarily Whittier the Bering Se Tanana crab, the Bering Sea King in the Bering Sea, snow crab.

We just coming off the second closu a row for king crab.

Now for the first time ever, the complete cl of the snow crab population out there.

So all the vessels are definitely facing a hard time.

S little better situated to weathe this current storm than others.

overall, it's not a good situati These vessels are extremely expe to maintain.

We have mortgage fe You still have insurance fees an still have maintenance costs.

An projects that keep adding up eve when sitting at the dock.

So ove the picture for the fleet in gen is looking very bleak right now this this point.

You mentioned t quotas were increasing before th crash.

How well did you do in th Lay-up years?

And and again, the of even one season, could that e for some of the folks who are fi or wanting to fish now?

Yeah.

Ye Another good question, Lori lead up to the collapse we really wer seeing an increase and the amoun crab available, the quotas set a distributed by the state were increasing every year.

So the pi was looking very good.

Myself an brothers invested in fishing rig to do catch these crab we purcha into the fishing vessel silver s in the summer of twenty twenty r before the before the collapse.

still obviously have mortgage payments on the vessel, on the fishing rights and quota we boug into.

So things were looking goo unfortune.

They, they took a tur the worse.

Obviously covid the impacts from that.

The Noha Summ Travel Service unable to conduct summer survey and summer of twen twenty one, that's starting to b very there was a kind of a key p of information that was just unfortunately missed to kind of maybe the impacts that were comi ahead.

So it's definitely things looking good until they weren't.

oh well thank you.

I didn't real that that vessel was such a rece purchase.

So my goodness, Erin, want to turn to you now.

Tell us about the research you do throug Eastern Bering Sea Trawl Survey.

you're learning from it and for who aren't familiar, what resear trial is, Japanese Lori Gabriel actually mentioned a bit about t The program I work for here in Kodiak, one of our our biggest responsibility is a trial survey that's happened every year since nineteen seventy five.

So it's a critical time series and understanding highly variable st like snow crab that we see that fluctuate quite a bit.

And there Larsen Bay itself.

We typically the bogusly from Dutch Harbor ev year in mid-May.

The survey runs the way until late August in som years.

So as you can tell, it's massive effort.

There are three hundred seventy five stations al the eastern Bering Sea and the t the overall goal to be out there to collect data as it's used in our research and our efforts to manage population Saxman.

So we' Kasaan going out and collecting on both abundance and biomass estimates.

How many crab there a But we also collect critical, critical information and size composition data on disease use.

Other aspects of the population are important.

You started with in twenty eighteen and said ther was.

We've talked a little about unusual abundance for snow crab that year.

Tell us about about t Is there any information or know about Y?

It may have been such a abundant year.

Yeah, question.

A said, I started in twenty eighte and that that really was a uniqu year.

for the bottom trawl surve especially for snow problem.

We the the largest cohort or the la group of juvenile stone crab.

We ever seen in the history of Lars Bay.

So the population was looki Galena there were a lot of these small snow crab that we're hopef couple of years that would enter fishable portion of the populati and kind of alongside seeing tha that large group of juvenile sno crab, two thousand eighteen was start of a heat wave event in th Bering Sea when we really starte experience these anomalously war thottam temperatures as it was.

was an interesting year, both in terms of seeing a lot snow crab, also seeing these really warm bo temperatures that we don't typic see when we see a lot of snow cr And then there was a pandemic an research got paused for a bit in two thousand twenty one survey.

said it was something you'd neve seen before.

What what were the findings?

Yeah, I was out for tw months in twenty twenty one.

And was it was unlike anything I've seen, we typically hit up near S Matthew Elim.

We tend to hit rea high density snow crab stations.

the net comes up there are sever thousand snow crab things genera look good.

Those are cold bottom temperatures that we know.

Snow need twenty, twenty one really r off the bat was a strange year.

we started hitting those histori high density stations, then that virtually coming up empty.

with crab.

There were maybe a couple hundred in Atka and continue tha through the eastern Bering Sea Service.

very apparent that ther a population stop collapse.

Like we've never seen in twenty twent we've never seen in twenty twent Gabriel turning to you, you said the sixty to seventy vessels tha normally fish for snow crab, onl fifteen to twenty, we're able to a go of it.

What do you know abo any sort of support from the fed government, federal fisheries disaster funds when they may arr And if you've heard and and are other options for revenue?

What' possible to help these vessel ow survive and keep making payments Yeah, so we have gone through th fishery disaster process.

Congre actually already appropriated.

T hundred million dollars in funds fishery disasters.

We're current waiting on the arm of NOAA to allocate a certain amount for th Bering sea snow crab closure, as as the Bering Sea King crab clos Even now, after the the funds ha already been appropriated, we're still waiting for for the proces applications to open up.

And the these fishery disaster programs, are a multi-year process.

Unfortunately, So the fishermen are in dire circumstances right today, this month, the rest of t year are really in a tough situa to be waiting on these funds.

My trade organization that I'm a bo member, Unalaska Bering Sea Crab is working to try and help build the funding process so that amou money allocated from the governm gets into the hands, the fisherm little bit quicker.

But right no it's still a very slow and unfortunately rather broken prog where we still may be waiting ye for the money to get into our ha even after it's been appropriate funded by by Congress.

And as fa other opportunities for fishing, these these boats that are part the Bering Sea crab are speciali to go after the Bering Sea King snow, crab and Tanana population it really is difficult to and expensive to to switch over to t another gear sector or to anothe fishing sector to try and target different species.

So really, th only option with the lack of fun right now is to kind of just sit tight and try to keep things as date as you can.

Even then, we'r still cutting maintenance costs.

You're cutting crew and you're j sitting at the dock trying to ho and pray the snow crab make a comeback.

You know, other fisher are able to maybe subsidize the current situation.

Perhaps king comes back or a larger Tanana cr season is on the way up.

So we'r really just sitting tight and tr to figure out where we can cut c But at this point, there's been payments made yet.

Yeah, that's that's correct.

And the allocati for the funds from Congress was appropriated in December.

Of cou government doesn't always move a fast as we would like.

So we sti are a far way off from getting m into the hands of fishermen that desperately need it.

All right.

very unfortunate, Aaron.

You fou that the snow crab, there was so thought from folks that they may been migrating west or north, bu found that they likely died rath than move 10 billion of them.

A staggering number.

What convince that it was likely more immortal than a migration event?

That's a great question.

and a question t we assign just asked.

First off, about when those staggering numb came in.

Ten billion snow crab, that's that's a huge number.

So trying to understand, as you mentioned, if those crab north, example, went to the Bering Sea they moved west into Russian wat then what led us to the conclusi the mortality event is that in twenty, twenty one we actually conducted a survey in the northe Deering as well as the Eastern S And we did not note a sizable increase in abundance in snow cr the northern Bering Sea.

which t us that that stock didn't move n as might have been anticipated.

talking to Russian scientist, th had also noted the decline in ca per unit effort in their twenty twenty Vitória.

So you might exp for example, if our snow crab population had West and Russian waters, that they would have had great fishing and they would hav seen that that increase in their catch per unit effort.

So that r led Scient this hypothesis given there were such radical changes the environment that this Arctic species really experienced large scale mortality event, did densi dependent effects concentrations these juvenile crabs, a smaller amount of cold water packing the into smaller spaces, less food w they their metabolism demands th they eat more, not a good situat How sensitive are these crabs to temperature changes as you've be studying them?

How much fluctuat in temperature can they take bef they really start to falter?

Yea I mentioned, snow crab are in Ar species.

We think of them as rea eating this cold body of water t that scientists call the Cold Wa less than two degrees Celsius.

T thought based on Prioress is tha small juveniles, Nome crab are a really the most critically in ne these cold waters.

And that's primarily because this this cold of water acts as a refuge from predators Pacific cod that typic tend to avoid those bodies of wa So when we bring snow crab into laboratory, they're able to surv up to warmer temperatures, eight Celsius.

But the thinking is tha it's this combination stressors within an environment.

So once t start to warm up, as you mention we have suddenly snow crab cramm smaller spaces.

They're fighting food resources.

You potentially an increased predation, things l these are really important when have a lot of organisms that are close together.

So a lot of time it's not an increase in temperat itself, not necessarily a direct effect on the physiological Kavi of the organism, but rather a su of indirect effects that act as multiple stressors to negatively influence populations you set a is to be able to forecast when a warming event may happen again.

how difficult is that to make a prediction like that?

Great ques Very difficult.

So we have a scientist, we have climate model that can can attempt to predict conditions.

We might see in the future.

The problem is that the population in our forty five yea survey time series is highly var survey time series is highly var It's it's very difficult to pred as Gabriel had said, that things looking really good in twenty, eighteen, twenty eighteen.

They catching a lot of crab in the fishery.

So I think it goes to s that the need to not only be abl predict these future heatwave ev but begin to understand how how influence snow crab directly, especially at specific stages, I think will be critical in potent being able to forecast these eve in the future.

All right.

Thank Erin.

Gabriel, I want to turn ba you.

What do you want to see fro industry and government to try t help resolve the health of the c fishery?

And what do you think c done?

Yeah, thank you, Lori.

I t honestly, just having rapid fina relief program, much like farmer during times of crop failure or windstorms or hailstorms, be implemented for not just obvious Bering fishermen, but fisheries across the country, we really ar need of a rapid financial relief program that works for the fishe right now, waiting on funds for that are due today, waiting for money to come in in a year to re isn't going to isn't going to cu right now.

We are in you know, w have mortgage payments.

We have fishing rights that I still the do on them.

So having some type rapid financing relief program a speeding up the disaster process that it works and you can get fu on a much quicker basis, would w be an excellent help to fisherme right now.

not only in Alaska bu across the country.

And, you kno the river salmon are are also no bountiful.

They're suffering a certain certain issues there as There's California that's having salmon closure as well.

There's to be fishermen that are facing similar issues, not just in Alas but across the country.

So havin rapid financial relief program f situations like these, for fishe disasters would be extremely hel to get that money in a matter of months.

instead of years.

Your v is I assume, tied up at the dock right now, not what you want.

Wh you think you'll have it back on water making money again?

So we very fortunate actually to get a little bit of funding for some u research.

And the Bering Sea, NO and HDFC, as well as the Bering Fisheries Research Foundation, w able to to pull money together t a couple of the vessels back to and start investigating some.

Th situation on water temperatures help the crab stocks out there.

was primarily focused on the Ber Sea, the iconic red king crab.

W a lot of research there for the month and the Middle of marching towards the a couple first weeks April here.

So it's there.

There opportunities coming.

And with t as well, the fishery disaster pr will be funding and research pro like that.

Peltola be excellent hope that comes through.

Thank y so much.

We'll have to leave it there.

I appreciate your time.

Tonight, the collapse.

The snow population mirrors decline seen some of Alaska's iconic salmon r in recent years.

As you heard th evening, there is a lot of resea being done to try to better understand the factors affecting marine species.

And although the still much to learn, the warming caused by climate change is one culprit.

Creating problems for t creatures that live below the wa surface and depend on a stable habitat to thrive.

That's it for edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit website, Alaska Public Dog, for breaking news and reports from o partners stations across the sta While you're there, sign up for Free Daily Digest so you won't m any of Alaska's top stories of t day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.