Red king crab commercial permit holders in Southeast Alaska will have a better chance of fishing in the coming seasons.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries approved a change in management regulations proposed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) that allows for a conservative commercial fishery when crab stocks aren’t enough for a typical competitive opening.
Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. The crab can bring in over $100 each. But commercial openings have been few and far between — just one in over a decade.
Several commercial crabbers testified to the Board of Fish at their meeting in Ketchikan in January. Andy Kittams crabs out of Petersburg, a town with over half of the fishery’s permit holders.
“Had we fished that 117,000 pounds in 2024, it would have been worth over $2 million to the state of Alaska’s fishermen. The economic trickle down to our processors and coastal communities would have doubled that,” Kittams said. “So let’s move this arbitrary threshold — simple enough: change regulation, harvest the surplus king crab when available.”
That threshold refers to a regional 200,000 pound minimum set decades ago when the crab was less valuable and the industry required higher volumes to make money. There needs to be that much crab in order for a competitive commercial fishery to happen, but the state’s red king crab stock estimates for the region have repeatedly fallen short of that minimum threshold.
And without a commercial opening, crab that could’ve been caught stay in the water and out of commercial pots. That’s partly why, for years, permit holders and the state department have tried to form a new way to harvest the resource.
“Fishermen, processors and ADFG developed this proposal to allow a controlled crab fishery, which will keep the harvest at the prescribed level,” Kittams added. “It will give fishermen an opportunity to go to work, give local processors an opportunity to keep their workers employed. Everyone wins.”
The proposal garnered unanimous support from the Board of Fish. (A similar proposal was brought to the Board of Fish in previous cycles, but wasn’t approved.)
Board Member Curtis Chamberlain of Anchorage commended the department and said he was moved by the innovation of fishermen when facing a marginalized resource.
“[Fishermen] used necessity … to find a market for this small amount of crab and to prevent their permits from effectively becoming useless,” said Chamberlain. “I found a lot of that discussion quite frankly inspiring. Because … a lot of these markets are becoming marginalized, and we have to find ways to operate within this new dynamic. And the red king crab fishery has and the fishermen have shown, if nothing, adaptable.”
With the board’s approval of the proposal, a smaller, conservative commercial fishery can open for a given season when red king crab estimates fall short of 200,000 pounds. In that scenario, permit holders are assigned individual catch limits (ICL) based on how much crab can be fished.
Department officials said it’s a management tool, and there’s still a chance the fishery closes before a permit holder has taken their full ICL. They also said this biologically-based harvest strategy doesn’t give the fishermen a guaranteed or set amount of red king crab harvest every year.
“Looking back over the history, if this was implemented, it would’ve opened the fishery, I believe, twice [more] in the last 20 years,” said Adam Messmer, Fish and Game’s lead shellfish biologist for the region. “It’s not going to make it a free-for-all. This isn’t going to be something that happens every single year. It would add a very minute amount of opportunity.”
But even so, a number of commercial fishermen who testified said the change is a step in the right direction.
The board’s approval of the state’s proposal followed their unanimous rejection of a different red king crab proposal from a Juneau-based group, Territorial Sportsmen Inc.
That proposal aimed to eliminate commercial fishing for red king crab in the Juneau area, where state data from 2024 estimates a quarter of the region’s red king crab population resides. Instead, the proposal asked that the personal use fishery have 100% of the area’s harvest.
Board Member Tom Carpenter of Cordova asked Messmer how removing that area’s portion from the region’s 200,000 pound minimum would impact the commercial fishery.
“If this were to pass, will you be able to execute the red king crab fishery at all in the future on the commercial side of things?” asked Carpenter.
“The way the regulations are now, with the thresholds: no, member Carpenter,” Messmer replied.
The total allocation that the Juneau proposal asked for raised red flags for board members. Member Chamberlain said it went too far.
“If the Alaska fishery was a body, this proposal would be cutting off the right arm to support the left,” remarked Chamberlain. “I think the long-term implications and damage to the overall body of the Alaska fishery cannot justify benefiting the personal use.”
The Board of Fish unanimously opposed the idea, and Territorial Sportsmen Inc.’s proposal failed.
Southeast’s commercial red king crab season, if it opens, happens in November. The last time it opened in 2017, fishermen caught about 120,000 pounds —worth around $1.3 million at the docks.
