Warming seas decimate Bering Sea Snow Crab population

[AMart]

Bering Sea, you drooling moron.

This is likely these crab migrating to colder waters, and this comes on top of last season's King Crab harvest being halted for low numbers as well. This is two years in a row.

omg that horrible lets lose some sleep!!!

 

[EMH]

Here you go:
View attachment 710821

Infographic: The Oceans Are Getting Warmer

This chart shows global ocean surface temperatures from 1880 to 2022 as a divergence from the 20th century average.

www.statista.com

The inability of the parrot of "the science" begins with a failure to understand the difference between data and fudge.

Truth be told, crick has no idea what the raw data of that chart was. Crick does not care. "The science" is about parroting "the scientists" and never noticing that there is

No breakout in cane activity
No rise in ocean levels

Which all stems from NO WARMING in the oceans...

 

[EMH]

This is the second time you've claimed that fires are due to the human consumption of water. You seem to make a habit of claiming nonsense a 4th grader wouldn't buy. You should work on that.

Question for the parrot ....


If earth was warming, all else constant, would there be more fires or less.....


Lol....

 

[bodecea]

Not a good sign but an excellent wake up to the many deniers who seem to think that no harm can come from getting warmer. Eight billion to one billion in 3 years. A 40% population decline in the last year alone.

Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Scientists say overfishing is not the cause | CNN

The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years.

www.cnn.com

Nothing to see here. Besides, it's now too late.

 

[odanny]

omg that horrible lets lose some sleep!!!

It's a troubling sign of far greater problems to come, and when snow crab numbers are estimated to be 80% less than normal, yea, that's pretty serious.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I’m on the oceanfront at Montauk this past week. Peak of the fall bass run. Have yet to see birds feasting on baitfish as they try to escape the blues and bass below - not once! Been this way for decades now. Started in the 80’s when trawlers were allowed to scoop up the squid. Been progressively downhill ever since.

 

[theHawk]

Here you go:
View attachment 710821

Infographic: The Oceans Are Getting Warmer

This chart shows global ocean surface temperatures from 1880 to 2022 as a divergence from the 20th century average.

www.statista.com

Who cares? The oceans and planet have been much warmer millions of years ago. Yet no mass planet death.

 

[Crick]

Crabs are carrion and trash feeders. Just like lobsters, shrimp, oysters, clams and etc.

This statement has several flaws.

Snow crabs will eat almost anything they can catch and break open with their claws, including fish, shrimp, crabs, worms, clams, brittle stars, snails, algae, and sponges. They will also scavenge on anything dead they find.

People used to think that lobsters were scavengers and ate primarily dead things. However, researchers have discovered that lobsters catch mainly fresh food (except for bait) which includes fish, crabs, clams, mussels, sea urchins, and sometimes even other lobsters!

Juvenile and adult shrimp are omnivorous, feeding on copepods, small mollusks, diatoms, algae, plant detritus, bacterial films, slime molds, and yeast.

Besides being seafood, oysters make waters healthier. Because oysters feed by filtering algae from the water, they function as a natural filter and improve water overloaded with nutrients.

Growing clams requires no feed – they filter phytoplankton directly from the water column.

Eating the dead is a common and very beneficial strategy in animal life on this planet. All of the above came from the NOAA Fisheries website.

So...where the population is shrinking drastically it is not the first time these wild fluctuations in crab populations have happened.

There is nothing about these animal's diets that would make them prone to die-offs. And this IS the first time a population crash like this has been observed in these animals.

Bearing sea ice is a contributing factor and not an overarching one.

You're the second poster here who doesn't know how to spell Bering. And you have NO basis your your contention.

And the biggest factor might be the lack of fish cleaning ships two years ago. As these traulers fish the caught fish are processed and cleaned on board with the trash dumped overboard...feeding the crabs.
Crabs eat fish guts and fins and bones get picked clean of bits of meat. Without the traulers working during the global shutdown two years ago the crabs went hungry and likely were unable to reproduce effectively during summer time.

Three points: 1) Snow crabs survived on Earth over a 100 million years before getting fed by garbage dumps from trawlers. 2) The percentage of the snow crab population that was intermittently fed by trawlers is microscopic. 3) The period when fishing trawlers stopped working also marks a period when snow crabbers stopped working.

 

[Crick]

Who cares? The oceans and planet have been much warmer millions of years ago. Yet no mass planet death.

There have been five mass extinctions and we're working on the sixth right now. Where the fuck have you been?

 

[Orangecat]

Crap Lives Matter.

 

[theHawk]

There have been five mass extinctions and we're working on the sixth right now. Where the fuck have you been?

Mass extinctions weren’t from global warming.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Over fishing

 

[JohnDB]

This statement has several flaws.

Snow crabs will eat almost anything they can catch and break open with their claws, including fish, shrimp, crabs, worms, clams, brittle stars, snails, algae, and sponges. They will also scavenge on anything dead they find.

People used to think that lobsters were scavengers and ate primarily dead things. However, researchers have discovered that lobsters catch mainly fresh food (except for bait) which includes fish, crabs, clams, mussels, sea urchins, and sometimes even other lobsters!

Juvenile and adult shrimp are omnivorous, feeding on copepods, small mollusks, diatoms, algae, plant detritus, bacterial films, slime molds, and yeast.

Besides being seafood, oysters make waters healthier. Because oysters feed by filtering algae from the water, they function as a natural filter and improve water overloaded with nutrients.

Growing clams requires no feed – they filter phytoplankton directly from the water column.

Eating the dead is a common and very beneficial strategy in animal life on this planet. All of the above came from the NOAA Fisheries website.

There is nothing about these animal's diets that would make them prone to die-offs. And this IS the first time a population crash like this has been observed in these animals.

You're the second poster here who doesn't know how to spell Bering. And you have NO basis your your contention.

Three points: 1) Snow crabs survived on Earth over a 100 million years before getting fed by garbage dumps from trawlers. 2) The percentage of the snow crab population that was intermittently fed by trawlers is microscopic. 3) The period when fishing trawlers stopped working also marks a period when snow crabbers stopped working.

It's called a food chain for a reason...one thing affects another which affects a third and fourth thing which results in no crabs.

There are other seasons where snow crab populations plummeted...might want to first revisit those years and see if there's any correlation. Like the 1992 falloff...that might be a good starting place.

 

[para bellum]

There is nothing about these animal's diets that would make them prone to die-offs. And this IS the first time a population crash like this has been observed in these animals.

It is not uncommon at all, especially with Opilio. They are very susceptible to parasitic disease and quotas can vary widely from year to year. Plus the larvae feed on phytoplankton that bloom at the ice edges, and when the ice sheet is too far north, the lack of food affects the survival of the larvae.

It could be partly due to warmer waters in the Bering Sea in 2018 and 2019. Cod eat the young crab, and warmer water in the Bering Sea "cold pool" means more cod and more predation. Or there could be an outbreak of BCD in the Opilio and Tanner crab populations, that has been on the rise too.

The fact is they don't know where the crab are, or if there is even a mortality event at all- they could be on the slope or under the ice, neither of which are surveyed. Or they could just be miscounting them. They are using a new model that is not well vetted. The ADFG and NMFS have been watching this generation of Opilio for 5 years, but there was no survey in 2020 due to covid and they lost track of them.

The expectation from the 2018 and 2019 seasons was a healthy Opilio population on the increase, but something happened in 2020-2021 and they are trying to figure out what. The Opies only had a 5.6 million pound quota last year- it was less than half of what they were expecting. In the 2020-2021 season it was 45 million pounds. In the early 90's there were a couple years it was over 300 million pounds. This year it will be zero. Boom and bust years are expected in commercial fishing.- any species, really.

The trawl bycatch is still 4.5 million pounds this year, it's always been the bottom trawlers that do the most damage to bottomfish habitats, not the targeted fisheries. I think they should at least allow the crabbers to catch as many as the trawlers throw away- lots of people's livelihoods will be wrecked this year, and that's a double-whammy from last year's drastic cut.

The Bristol Bay Red King crabs are overfished. That's a small fishery and sensitive to overfishing. The season was closed last year too.

The big question is where are the Opies.

P.S. The Russians will harvest 103 million pounds of Opies this year, last year it was 91.3 million. The crab are still out there...

 

[Crick]

It is not uncommon at all, especially with Opilio. They are very susceptible to parasitic disease and quotas can vary widely from year to year. Plus the larvae feed on phytoplankton that bloom at the ice edges, and when the ice sheet is too far north, the lack of food affects the survival of the larvae.

It could be partly due to warmer waters in the Bering Sea in 2018 and 2019. Cod eat the young crab, and warmer water in the Bering Sea "cold pool" means more cod and more predation. Or there could be an outbreak of BCD in the Opilio and Tanner crab populations, that has been on the rise too.

The fact is they don't know where the crab are, or if there is even a mortality event at all- they could be on the slope or under the ice, neither of which are surveyed. Or they could just be miscounting them. They are using a new model that is not well vetted. The ADFG and NMFS have been watching this generation of Opilio for 5 years, but there was no survey in 2020 due to covid and they lost track of them.

The expectation from the 2018 and 2019 seasons was a healthy Opilio population on the increase, but something happened in 2020-2021 and they are trying to figure out what. The Opies only had a 5.6 million pound quota last year- it was less than half of what they were expecting. In the 2020-2021 season it was 45 million pounds. In the early 90's there were a couple years it was over 300 million pounds. This year it will be zero. Boom and bust years are expected in commercial fishing.- any species, really.

The trawl bycatch is still 4.5 million pounds this year, it's always been the bottom trawlers that do the most damage to bottomfish habitats, not the targeted fisheries. I think they should at least allow the crabbers to catch as many as the trawlers throw away- lots of people's livelihoods will be wrecked this year, and that's a double-whammy from last year's drastic cut.

The Bristol Bay Red King crabs are overfished. That's a small fishery and sensitive to overfishing. The season was closed last year too.

The big question is where are the Opies.

P.S. The Russians will harvest 103 million pounds of Opies this year, last year it was 91.3 million. The crab are still out there...

Very informative. Much obliged.

 

[flacaltenn]

Not a good sign but an excellent wake up to the many deniers who seem to think that no harm can come from getting warmer. Eight billion to one billion in 3 years. A 40% population decline in the last year alone.

Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Scientists say overfishing is not the cause | CNN

The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years.

www.cnn.com

Hope ya dont mind me Editing your title. "Bering Sea Snow Crap" just isnt' gonna substitute for crab on my dish.

 

[flacaltenn]

Here you go:
View attachment 710821

Infographic: The Oceans Are Getting Warmer

This chart shows global ocean surface temperatures from 1880 to 2022 as a divergence from the 20th century average.

www.statista.com

ANY species that cannot adjust and survive a 0.7 DegC shift in MEAN Ocean temp over SIXTY YEARS --- doesn't deserve to thrive.

And you'll GET NOWHERE showing GLOBAL AVERAGES. Not everything AVERAGES WELL around the planet. For instance the Southern Sea hasn't warmed much at all over 60 or 80 years. And it MIGHT be that the Bering sea is more responsive to LOWER latitude incoming currents of warmer water.

But since Snow Crab had the BIGGEST population in 40 years just around 2017 or so -- I wouldn't be so quick to LEAP to the reason for EVERYTHING that goes wrong in the world -- which is a MILD warming of the sea water over a 2 or 4 year period.

Just about 6 years ago -- your GW Religious zealots blamed the NW USA Oyster drought on Ocean Acidification. NOAA studied it. TRIED TO KILL Oysters with "acidification" but got up to 8 times HIGHER than measured in the harvest areas before they saw any change.

Turns out the fisheries were replanting Asian oysters that didn't tolerate the COLDER WATERS of Washington/Oregon and were more susceptible to disease. Oyster farmers SCREAMED GW - Got LOADS of cash and studies and it turned out -- it WASNT "ocean acidification" or warming -- these PRIVATE FARMERS were using a NON-NATIVE species that on the verge of death in waters that cold.



So dont try so hard. And Statista is a LOUSY place to get data. Go to NOAA directly. Statista doesn't know a crab from a crap..

 

[Crick]

ANY species that cannot adjust and survive a 0.7 DegC shift in MEAN Ocean temp over SIXTY YEARS --- doesn't deserve to thrive.

And very likely wouldn't have survived the 130 million or so years they've been here. But good to have your opinion on the matter.

And you'll GET NOWHERE showing GLOBAL AVERAGES. Not everything AVERAGES WELL around the planet. For instance the Southern Sea hasn't warmed much at all over 60 or 80 years. And it MIGHT be that the Bering sea is more responsive to LOWER latitude incoming currents of warmer water.

The different temperature changes that have taken place at the poles and the equator have, as you know, enabled and enhanced Rossby Waves, one of whose northward moving lobes has consistently been taking warm air into the Bering sea, Alaska and the US Pacific Northwest. So it is quite likely that the Bering Sea has seen greater than the average warming. I posted a global sea level graphic in response to poster EMH who had claimed the oceans had seen no warming whatsoever.

Recent Warming in the Bering Sea and Its Impact on the Ecosystem

P. J. Stabeno1, R. L. Thoman2, and K. Wood1,3 1Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle, WA, USA 2International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA 3Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington...

arctic.noaa.gov

Bering Climate and Ecosystem - Changes in summer and winter weather in the Bering Sea. A Bering Sea Climate and Ecosystem Essay

https://uaf-iarc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Bering-sea-conditions_2019_web.pdf

But since Snow Crab had the BIGGEST population in 40 years just around 2017 or so -- I wouldn't be so quick to LEAP to the reason for EVERYTHING that goes wrong in the world -- which is a MILD warming of the sea water over a 2 or 4 year period.

It is demonstrable, however, that their disappearance is not due to overfishing and therefore has to be due to some sort of environmental change. Warming water and disappearing sea ice may well have caused a mass migration but even the slight possibility that they have all perished is sufficient cause for investigation

Just about 6 years ago -- your GW Religious zealots

As opposed to the pro-oil and anti-science religious zealots?

blamed the NW USA Oyster drought on Ocean Acidification. NOAA studied it. TRIED TO KILL Oysters with "acidification" but got up to 8 times HIGHER than measured in the harvest areas before they saw any change.

Turns out the fisheries were replanting Asian oysters that didn't tolerate the COLDER WATERS of Washington/Oregon and were more susceptible to disease. Oyster farmers SCREAMED GW - Got LOADS of cash and studies and it turned out -- it WASNT "ocean acidification" or warming -- these PRIVATE FARMERS were using a NON-NATIVE species that on the verge of death in waters that cold.

Who got "LOADS of cash"? I wager no one. I think some scientists got research funded to figure out what happened which it seems they did while the oystermen struggled to get by. And, of course, based on your previous comments those non-native oysters never deserved to thrive anyway.
Japanese oysters were introduced into Pacific NW aquaculture in the 1900s, not recently and, according to the research I located, acidification is still an ongoing problem with their larva and is impacting the industry.

What can the Pacific Northwest Oyster Aquaculture Industry do about Ocean Acidification?

[caption id="attachment_94561" align="alignleft" width="367"] Oysters for sale at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Samish Bay, WA. Photo: Brian Katz[/caption] By Thamanna Vasan and David M. Kling, Department of Applied Economics, Oregon State University Chances are that, when you go to a restaurant for...

www.agclimate.net

https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/climate-change-wa.pdf

Washington's oysters are a case study of hope in the face of environmental disaster

When climate change started killing the Pacific Northwest's oysters by the millions, scientists and growers taught the world how to safeguard an ecosystem.

crosscut.com

I searched Google with "was acidification found not to be the problem with pacific nw oysters" and found NOTHING supporting your contention. Would you care to provide a link? I'd particularly like to see the study which tried to kill oysters with acidification but failed.

So dont try so hard. And Statista is a LOUSY place to get data. Go to NOAA directly. Statista doesn't know a crab from a crap..

"Don't try so hard"? Is that advice you would take?

From NOAA. The blue line is ocean. It looks very close to the Statista data.

 

[Crick]

Mass extinctions weren’t from global warming.

This coming from the person who, five minutes ago, didn't know they'd ever happened.

 

[there4eyeM]

If the population had only been decimated (reduced by one tenth), things would not be so bad.