Oct 21, 2023 07:49 PM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180983112/
EXCERPTS: Between 2018 and 2021, the snow crab population off the coast of Alaska declined dramatically: Some 10 billion of the cold water-loving crustaceans disappeared, which represents around 90 percent of the region’s population. The unprecedented die-off prompted Alaska to cancel its snow crab harvest in 2022 and again in 2023.
But what happened to the snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio) in the eastern Bering Sea? Scientists—and the fishers and communities that rely on the crabs for income—have been trying to piece together what led to the population’s sudden collapse.
Now, they finally have some answers. The crabs likely died of starvation as a consequence of marine heat waves in 2018 and 2019, researchers report this week in the journal Science. Other factors also contributed to the crabs going hungry, including an unusually large population of snow crabs in 2018.
“It’s a fishery disaster in the truest sense of the word,” says study co-author Cody Szuwalski, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to ScienceNews’ Jude Coleman.
[...] In addition, other species likely took advantage of the crabs’ plight. The warmer water temperatures likely allowed other species, such as Pacific cod, to move into the normally frigid crab habitat and feast on the few hungry crustaceans that remained.
And it wasn’t just the crabs that suffered because of the heat waves. Salmon, seabirds and seal populations also declined, the researchers write... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Between 2018 and 2021, the snow crab population off the coast of Alaska declined dramatically: Some 10 billion of the cold water-loving crustaceans disappeared, which represents around 90 percent of the region’s population. The unprecedented die-off prompted Alaska to cancel its snow crab harvest in 2022 and again in 2023.
But what happened to the snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio) in the eastern Bering Sea? Scientists—and the fishers and communities that rely on the crabs for income—have been trying to piece together what led to the population’s sudden collapse.
Now, they finally have some answers. The crabs likely died of starvation as a consequence of marine heat waves in 2018 and 2019, researchers report this week in the journal Science. Other factors also contributed to the crabs going hungry, including an unusually large population of snow crabs in 2018.
“It’s a fishery disaster in the truest sense of the word,” says study co-author Cody Szuwalski, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to ScienceNews’ Jude Coleman.
[...] In addition, other species likely took advantage of the crabs’ plight. The warmer water temperatures likely allowed other species, such as Pacific cod, to move into the normally frigid crab habitat and feast on the few hungry crustaceans that remained.
And it wasn’t just the crabs that suffered because of the heat waves. Salmon, seabirds and seal populations also declined, the researchers write... (MORE - missing details)
