Next year’s guideline harvest level for the commercial Kodiak District Tanner crab fishery is 560,000 pounds. That’s less than a fifth of what it was this year, and less than ten percent of the harvest level in 2023.
On the southern side of the Alaska Peninsula, fishermen can harvest another 210,000 pounds of Tanners, which is slightly less than the previous season’s harvest limit of 225,000 pounds. Commercial fishing for the species on the west side of the peninsula is closed entirely for the upcoming season. Up to 255,000 pounds of Tanner crabs were able to be harvested there in 2024.
The season is set to start at noon on Jan. 15, if the weather cooperates.
Nat Nichols, an area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that the drop in harvest limits was expected.
“This is the tail end of this big cohort of crab that we’ve been fishing on – this will be the fourth season that we’ve been fishing on them,” he said.
A large cohort was found in the summer trawl survey back in 2018, and has supported commercial fishing since 2022. The population peaked the following year, marking an all-time high for the species. The ones left now are the elders of the group.
The species’ population isn’t dropping because of climate change though – this cohort is just reaching its maximum natural lifespan. Tanner crabs generally only live up to seven or eight years, and large cohorts seem to come every five to seven years.
Nichols said fishermen should expect darker, and more beat up shells than the last two years. The crabs are likely in the last shells of their lives, and, literally, on their last legs too.
“A lot of them have been terminally molted for a year, two, or longer already,” Nichols said. “So that shell is getting dirty right? It’s getting dark, it’s growing things on it – barnacles, egg casings – things like that and it’s getting damaged, it’s getting chipped, it’s getting scratched. They’re losing legs and they’re not able to replace those because they’re not growing new shells anymore.”
The upcoming season might be the last chance for commercial fishermen to harvest Tanners for a little while though. Harvest levels are determined by the summer trawl survey leading up to the next season, and Nichols isn’t sure if there’s enough surplus for a season in 2026.
That being said, there is a decently sized cohort first observed in 2023 that could lead to another season as soon as 2027 but there are still a lot of unknowns.
“That’s one of the things we’ll be looking at pretty closely over the next couple seasons to try and watch how this new group persists in the population and whether they’re surviving well or not,” Nichols said.
Meanwhile, the next summer trawl survey starts in June 2025.
