Blame Russia? Actually a big deal for alaskas economy, and a lot of people who caught them up there for work.
Bit long, but True story. I was in Alaska in the prince william sound when i was 20, out of Valdez, fishing for pink salmon about a decade after the exxon oil spill. The fish had come back and we were maxing out daily. 55’ purse net, so the hull could hold approx. 50k# of fish if i recall. Could be off on that, but here is the key: The salmon shortage after the spill led to a mass cannery shut down/closures. So even though we were maxing out, the canneries left were setting low limits, changing on a daily basis, and more often than not, it was about half our max capacity. There was nothing left to do but dump the balance overboard, of which approx 90% had died at that point. Even though in about 8 weeks I had made about 6k( good money for a 20 year old in 92’-93’), not only could i have doubled that, but more importantly was so appalled at the waste and lack of planning from the canneries to not give more of an advance notice of the limits, that i didn't go back the next season. To me, it was an easy fix, but the fish and game did not want to interfere with the canneries. Probably some legal restrictions or something, but, to me, it was one of those times where i feel government should have stepped in. Keep in mind, we were a slightly smaller than the average fishing boat and one of thousands in the Sound. Being conservative and saying we dumped 10k of fish a day away, for 40 days straight multiplied by approx 3k in boats out there………. Major fail by humans. Major. Not only did we cause the disruption of the ecosystem there with the spill, but cared less about the continual damage and waste we were doing, just to make sure the canneries could wait until the last second to make sure the limit they set actually maxed them out each day, versus setting them earlier and then possibly not having enough input for what they could output. Ohh the potential loss of some money was the driving factor in such waste. Sometimes us humans suuuuccck. I went to work for the dept. of ecology for the state of Washington shortly after that. It kinda changed my life and viewpoint on many things. Anyhow, thought that was a loose tie-in to this thread some might find disgustedly interesting.
Apparently the people in the Alaskan fish hatcheries don't know what happened to the crabs but suspect the water has been too warm for two seasons and they've either died of disease from being cold adapted creatures or migrated off the sea shelf or to the north further in search of cold water. Global warming is in full motion.
It is...they are still farmed in the hatcheries where about 60% of them come from...it's the wild population that has disappeared ruining the season for fishermen and apparently for crabs as well as other wildlife that feed off them
The husband of my home nurse is mainland Chinese. He watches a lot of Chinese news. She told me that the news is obsessed with news about Taiwan and angry at U.S. support for Taiwan.
We're watching the Taiwanese news feed regularly and I've gotta say, I'm worried about my family there these days.
