By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Crab industry officials riding the high tide of a new management program are facing the reality of an ugly new issue: high-grading.

From King Cove to Dutch Harbor and Kodiak to Seattle, a number of fishermen are talking openly about extensive high-grading, the practice of harvesting only high-valued king crab while discarding those flawed with barnacles, missing limbs or scuffed old shells.

If anecdotal reports from fishermen prove accurate, that could mean the loss of millions of dollars of crab discarded at sea because they were worth less per pound.

"It's very possible that this is happening," Arni Thomson, executive director of the Seattle-based Alaska Crab Coalition, said Jan. 5. "We don't condone it. We don't know what the extent of this problem is, but we are going to head it off. We have got to get to full retention."

Forrest Bowers, state area management biologist for shellfish and groundfish in Dutch Harbor, said he had heard anecdotally that fishermen delivering to various ports were discarding legal, but lower-value males.

"For those discarded crab, generally we look at 25 percent mortality for pot gear handling," he said.

King Cove Mayor Henry Mack said he was told by fishermen that dozens of dirty, legal-sized male king crab were discarded at sea daily during the King Cove fishery because vessel owners wanted the higher priced crab. "It's bothering them, too," he said. "They could have been in with their quota two or three days earlier, if they were able to keep all the crab they caught."

Dale Schwarzmiller of Peter Pan Seafoods, which processes the crab at King Cove, said his company was paying $4.60 a pound for top-quality king crab, allowing for up to 10 percent of the catch to be flawed. Lower valued crab that exceed 10 percent of the catch was garnering $3.70 a pound, the destined for meat extractor markets, typically in Asia, he said. In a typical year, about 12 percent of the king crab harvest is comprised of the lower-value catch, but for some reason, there was more this year, he said.

Fisheries veteran Dave Woodruff, who operates a processing plant in Kodiak, said his company paid one price for all crab delivered to the dock, but that he heard crews aboard some crab vessels complaining that other (Bering Sea) processors were paying less for the flawed crab.

Before the privatization of the crab industry through what is dubbed "rationalization" in the industry, most processors kept the high-quality crab together and sold the flawed catch for a lower price, because the marketplace doesn't pay as much for the dark crab, Woodruff said.

Thomson said the Pacific Northwest Crab Industry Advisory Committee would meet in early February in Seattle to discuss the matter. "We are not going to tolerate it," he said. The committee is an approved advisory committee to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Alaska Board of Fish.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.