STOCK QUOTES     More market data...

Crab fishing's tight seasons wind down

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Fishermen benefited from some of the best catch rates since the late 1980s, and the absence of fierce storms.

"It was pretty frisky out there, but there really wasn't any terrible weather," said Jerry Matson, an Edmonds-based crabber who joined in the harvest that ended Monday at 11:59 p.m.

The crab harvest includes many Puget Sound-based vessels, with owners who invest heavily in supplies, fuel, repairs and other maritime services. The harvest was pioneered more than a half century ago. In recent years it has been marked by increasingly intense competition as crews worked round-the-clock to grab crabs before fishery managers closed the seasons.

The harvests have ranked among the most lucrative in North America but also among the most dangerous. On Sept. 13, 1993, for example, a 58-foot crabber, the Nettie H, disappeared in the Bering sea, claiming a five-member crew. Between 1991 and 1996, more than 60 crew members died pursuing king and other crab off Alaska, according to one federal study. That death rate was more than 50 times higher than the average death rate for all U.S. occupations.

Next year, the fleet will work under a new system, with each vessel assigned a quota that can be caught in a more leisurely harvest.

Congress approved the harvest changes in 2003. Under the new system, vessel owners are free to claim their annual harvest quota each year, or sell the harvest rights to the highest bidder. The law also divided up purchase rights for crab among processors.

This winter, there will be one last derby-style harvest involving snow crab, a smaller species. Then, the new quota system will go into effect.

Matson, who has fished the harvest since the 1960s, said he has no regrets about leaving behind the race for the crab.

"It's about time," said Matson. "This fishery had a bunch of people who kept crowding in, and that's made it tough on the people who were here for a long time."

The red king crab harvest in the Bristol Bay area off Alaska's southwest coast peaked in 1980, when the fleet hauled in more than 129 million pounds of crab. Stocks then collapsed, and in 1983 the season was closed all together.
 
This year, the harvest guideline was set at 14.27 million pounds. But the crab were worth a lot more. Processors paid at least $4.70 a pound compared to 90 cents a pound in 1980, according to Forrest Bowers, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist.

At this year's prices, the average vessel grossed about $270,000.

The crab stocks also appear to be strengthening. The harvest abundance is measured as the number of legal males per baited steel pot trap set along the bottom. This year, the average was 23 per pot. That compares to just 6.7 per pot in 1992.

"The crab are really at about the highest level since 1980," Bowers said. Harvest quotas, however, are set more conservatively to try to protect against another stock collapse.

No vessels sank during this year's harvest. But the Coast Guard evacuated by helicopter two seriously injured crew members.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com