Less than ideal ice conditions mean winter crab season off to a slow start

The Norton Sound winter fishery for red king crab opened on Feb. 1. Less than optimal ice conditions mean that fewer crabs have been harvested in 2024 compared to recent years, according to numbers from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

As has been the case since 2020, there is no local commercial buyer purchasing crab this winter. But so far, 11 crabbers have signed up for permits to be catcher-sellers.

As of Monday afternoon, five of those crabbers are making delivery, said Kevin Clark, the area management biologist with ADF&G’s office in Nome. But the catch per unit effort, or CPUE, which is the amount of crab per pot, is much lower than it was in recent seasons, sitting at a rate of 1.27.

“In 2022, we had a CPUE of 3.5, and in 2023 we had CPUE of 6.7, but at the same time, our ice conditions were much better,” Clark said. “The catch per unit effort is highly influenced by ice conditions. You can have all kinds of crabs out there, and if you don’t have pan ice where you can put pots, then your catch rates are going to go down.”

Usually the flat, pan ice extends further offshore, Clark said. He noted that anyone looking across the sea ice from Nome could see that jumbled, ragged sea ice is relatively close to shore this winter.

“It’s really hard to dig holes in that stuff, and it’s unstable ice—it doesn’t take much of a wind to start breaking it up,” Clark said.

The current value of the fishery is about $10,000, Clark said. There were 1,275 pounds of crab harvested to date, with an average weight of 2.8 pounds.

“The crab are tracking with what we expected,” Clark added. “The crab sizes are fairly decent from the reports I’ve gotten.”

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council sets an annual overfishing limit, or OFL, as well as an acceptable biological catch, or ABC, for the crab stock in Norton Sound. This year, the OFL was set at 513,000 pounds, and the ABC was set at 483,000 pounds. The winter crab fishery is allotted eight percent of that ABC, so that means the harvest level is set at 38,640 pounds.

Another 7.5 percent of that total is allocated to the Community Development Quota Program. That leaves the remaining 408,135 pounds of red king crab available to be harvested during the summer season.

There is a subsistence-only zone for crabbing in front of Nome that extends three miles offshore, and from the mouth of the Nome River west to Dredge 6.

Clark wanted to remind residents that sales of subsistence crab is illegal, and that only those 11 crabbers are authorized to act as catchersellers.

“Buying subsistence caught crab is not only a violation for the seller is in violation for the buyer for knowingly buying it,” Clark said.

The commercial winter crab fishery closes on April 30.