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It was fast and furious for Alaska’s premiere crab fishery with the fleet catching the nearly eight-million pound red king crab quota at Bristol Bay in less than three weeks.

The overall take was down 15 percent from the 2015 fishery and will likely fetch record prices when all sales are made.

“The only price we have is an advance price so fishermen can pay fuel, bait and other trip expenses. The final price will be determined from now to January,” said Jake Jacobsen, executive director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, which represents 70 percent of the Bering Sea crab harvesters.

Crabbers fetched an average price of $8.18 per pound for their king crab last year and the fishery was valued at over $81 million at the docks.

The hauls since the fishery got underway on October 15 averaged 37.4 red kings per pot, compared to 32 crabs last year, Jacobsen said, adding that some boats were catching 60 to 70 crab per pot, even as the fishery was coming to a close.

That’s where the furious comes in – the crabbers believe there are lots more crab on the grounds than were revealed in the standardized summer survey upon which the catch quotas are based.

“It’s not one of those things where we don’t think the crab is there, it’s a result of the survey not being able to find them,” said Ruth Christiansen, science 

Jacobsen agreed, saying “Fishermen were very pleased with the good fishing and at the same time furious that the catch could be so low when the resource is more abundant than they’ve seen in many a year.”  

He added that they also saw high numbers of female and undersized crab, which bodes well for next year. Only legal-sized males are allowed to be retained for sale.

The Bering Sea crab fisheries are co-managed by the state and the federal government. Federal biologists conduct the annual summer surveys and calculate the catch quotas; the state Dept. of Fish and Game manages the crab fisheries in-season. 

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