The southwest section of the Kodiak district, opened in 2004 for the first time since 1993, will add 450,000 pounds to a total allowable harvest of 1,750,000 pounds, said Nick Sagalkin, a state shellfish area management biologist at Kodiak.

The Chignik district, last opened in 1989, has a quota of 400,000 pounds, and the South Peninsula, last opened in 2001, has an allowable harvest of 300,000 pounds, Sagalkin said.

The Unalaska Bay portion of the Eastern Aleutian district has a guideline harvest level of 35,304 pounds, down from a guideline harvest of 47,219 pounds in 2004, said Forrest Bowers, area management biologist for shellfish at Dutch Harbor.

The Eastern Aleutian district was opened last year for the first time in 10 years. State fisheries officials closed the area to fishing after the 1994 season because of low abundance of crab, Bowers said.

While Unalaska Bay is open, the Makushin Bay area is closed this year because of the Selendang Ayu shipping and oil spill disaster in the Aleutians in December.

Bowers said the decrease in the allowable catch set did not come as a surprise, because summer trawl surveys for the past two years indicated a decreased number of young male bairdi crab, known as pre-recruits.

"We haven't had a lot of recruitment to legal size class in the last two years," he said.

Pacific cod, halibut, salmon and pollock all prey on the young crab, he said.

Commercial size male bairdi crab, which must have a minimum size carapace of 5.5 inches, weigh in at an average of 2 to 4 pounds.

Sagalkin said crab fishers in the Kodiak area have been alerted about potential problems with parasite-infected crab in the coming season. Little is actually known about bitter crab syndrome, a parasitic disease which give the crab a bitter taste and chalky texture to the meat, he said.

"We're not expecting it to be a big problem, but I did want people to be aware of it, so if they noticed crab with these characteristics they would recognize it and not sell it," he said.

Fishermen should pull infected crab out and deliver them to state fisheries officials at Kodiak, who can dispose of the crab on land, he said.