By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

KODIAK — A quarter of a century after the demise of Kodiak's once lucrative king crab fishery, University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Bill Bechtol is still uncertain whether it was overfishing or several other factors that led to disappearance of the kings.

Bechtol, a doctoral student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told participants at a seminar at ComFish March 15 that he hopes to have some better answers at next year's annual gathering of commercial fishermen, state biologists and others.

Possible causes of the demise of the crabs could include overharvest, removal of large male crab, skewed sex ratios between males and females, and sequential depletion of stock subunits, Bechtol said. The typical male crab will mate with three females in a season, he said. His studies found in one bay there was a high percentage of unfertilized females, he said. “If we overfish males we could have a problem; large female crab want to mate with large males,” he said.

Bechtol and researcher Gordon Kruse, also with UAF's school of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, is looking into these and several other possible clues, including habitat alterations that may have caused damage to crab habitat and caused altering of habitat of other species, he said.

Back in the 1965-66 season, the king crab fishery in Kodiak one year yielded some 95 million pounds of crab, but by 1983 the fishery was closed because of low population levels of the kings.

“We saw the crustacean populations crash within a limited time frame,” Bechtol said.

The crustacean system became a groundfish-dominated system.

Much of that area used to be open to bottom trawling, and it is unknown what effect that disturbance of the ocean bottom had on the king crab, he said. The juvenile crab prefer a high relief, rocky habitat to hide from predators and can spend that portion of their lives hiding out until the podding stage, he said.

Bechtol noted that in the early 1970s, prior to the crash, there tended to be colder temperatures, which warmed in the early 1980s. “When temperatures were low, it looked like we got higher recruitment,” he said.

Bechtol said that Kodiak is not the only area of Alaska to experience a crash of crab stocks. Bechtol said most of the major crab fisheries throughout the northern Gulf of Alaska went through a period of exploration, followed by high harvests and then experienced declines. These areas went through two to three cycles of high to low population levels, followed by a crash. Many of the stocks have not recovered to this day.

“Given the time that has passed, you've got to ask why haven't they rebuilt, despite a halt in commercial harvest by state fisheries officials,” he said.

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