The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted March 22 to remove a requirement of a minimum allowable catch of 4 million pounds of bairdi, but left in place other management measures to assure stock conservation. Under the old rules, stock surveys had to assure sufficient numbers of mature male and female bairdi to sustain the fishery with a harvest of 4 million pounds.

Spokesmen for two crab organizations involved in the fishery applauded the move, giving credit to the controversial federal crab rationalization program. Under the federal plan, each participating vessel is allocated a percentage of an allowable harvest, which itself is set to assure the continued health of the fishery.

The state board recognized that the downsizing of the fleet through crab rationalization, coupled with individual fishing quotas for each vessel, places strict limits on what can be harvested, said Arni Thomson of the Alaska Crab Coalition.

The 4 million pound harvest minimum, allowed only if surveys showed sufficient presence of mature male and female bairdi crab to sustain the fishery, was set up in the late 1990s. At the time, some 280 vessels were qualified for the so-called derby fisheries, when each vessel scrambled to harvest as much as possible, despite weather conditions, before the allowable quota was taken.

Now any vessels participating in the fishery have a strict limit on what they may harvest.

"By removing the minimum (total allowable catch), we could likely have a fishery next year, as long as the mature male abundance level continues increasing in population," Thomson said.

The state fish board action also won approval from Tom Casey of the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Group. "Crab rationalization gives the biologists confidence that there will be no over-harvesting of the quota, thereby threatening the reproductive stocks," he said.

"If we go over our (individual fishing quota) we are in deep trouble with the National Marine Fisheries Service. You are getting set up for a fine if you over-harvest. Good rules are good business," Casey said.