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AP PHOTO/Klas Stolpe/Petersburg Pilot
Mike Oase, left, and Joel Lopez unload tanner crab onto the sorting table at the Icicle Seafoods plant in Petersburg in February. Fishery advisory committees had requested that the Chignik and South Alaska Peninsula tanner crab fisheries be closed this year. The state Department of Fish and Game, however, decided to open the fishery based on survey data and harvest strategies.
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The 2006 tanner crab fisheries in Chignik and the South Alaska Peninsula will open on schedule Jan. 15, despite requests from fishery advisory committees to close them down, state fisheries officials said Dec. 22.
Spokesmen for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said they reviewed advisory committee requests to halt the fisheries, but decided that based on survey data and regulatory harvest strategies that the request was not warranted.
The guideline harvest levels for the 2006 bairdi fisheries are 200,000 pounds in the Chignik management district and 290,000 pounds in the western section of the South Peninsula district.
The department conducts surveys annually to estimate abundance of tanner crab. Those estimates are compared to thresholds contained within the state Board of Fisheries regulatory harvest strategies. Thresholds in Chignik and the western section of the South Peninsula for fisheries in 2006 have been achieved, state officials said.
Tanner crab forms the basis of a thriving domestic fishery from Southeast Alaska north through the Bering Sea. They are also marketed under their trade names - snow, or opilio crab, and tanner, or bairdi crab. Males of commercial size usually range from 7 to 11 years of age, and vary in weight from 1 and 2 pounds for opilio and 2 and 4 pounds for bairdi.
The harvest strategies have minimum thresholds in place to protect the breeding stock and minimum guideline harvest levels to assure manageability. The decision to open the fisheries was in keeping with the current harvest strategy in regulation, officials said. The department has an in-season management program to assess fishery performance and collect daily information from the fishing grounds. If in-season performance warrants closure prior to achieving the guideline harvest level, staff issue an emergency order to close the fisheries.
The 2005 South Peninsula harvest of tanner crab ended Feb. 11, when state officials determined the allowable number of crab had been taken. The Chignik fishery closed Feb. 7.
Preliminary figures showed the Chignik bairdi harvest for 2005 was 410,795 pounds and the South Peninsula harvest was 295,687 pounds, Fish and Game officials in Kodiak confirmed. The fisheries were closed for the 2004 season.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.
