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About 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the Bering Sea between 2018 and 2021. A recent study concluded that warmer water temperatures helped drive the crabs to starvation.
What happened to Alaska's crabs? Between 2018 and 2021, there was an unexpected 92% decline in snow crab abundance, or about 10 billion crabs. The crabs had been plentiful in the years prior ...
Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death.
In 1980, at the peak of the king crab industry, Alaskan fisheries produced 200 million lb of crab, but by 1983, the total size of the catch had dropped to less than 10% of this size. [13] Several theories for the precipitous drop in the crab population have been proposed, including overfishing, warmer waters, and increased fish predation.
But during the 2018-2019 heat wave, Pacific cod were able to go to these warmer-than-usual waters and ate a portion of what was left of the snow crab population.
Common names for crabs in this genus include "queen crab" (in Canada) and "spider crab". The generic name Chionoecetes means snow (χιών, chion) inhabitant (οἰκητης, oiketes); [3] opilio means shepherd, and C. opilio is the primary species referred to as snow crab.
The introduction of pigs on Clipperton Island by guano miners in the 1890s reduced the crab population, which allowed grassland to gradually cover about 80 percent of the atoll's land surface. [5] The elimination of these pigs in 1958 caused most of this vegetation to disappear, resulting in the return of millions of crabs.
While counting snow crabs at sea in 2021, fisheries biologist Erin Fedewa saw that something was deeply amiss.Fedewa, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist, spends ...