Federal biologists hope a plan to breed red king crabs in captivity and eventually release crabs into the wild will help rebuild Kodiak stocks.
The project is aimed at boosting crab harvests and approaching the catches of the late 1970s, when Kodiak was the center of a fishing bonanza and fishermen harvested crabs worth millions of dollars.
The boom reached 130 million pounds worth about $115 million in 1980 but went bust by 1982, when crab stocks collapsed. Decades of fishing restrictions followed.
The time is right to try something new, said Brian Allee, director of the Alaska Sea Grant College Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
To begin the project, 32 plate-size crustaceans collected by state biologists at Alitak Bay on the south end of Kodiak Island were delivered to the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward.
Sixteen egg-bearing female crabs will serve as brood stock in a research project. The 16 male crabs will be retained for pathology and genetic analysis by state biologists.
Pribilof Island communities are interested in rebuilding their local blue king crab stocks. Allee said a plan is being worked out to capture blue king crab brood stock from Pribilof waters.
"It's a very exciting enterprise, very innovative," Allee said. "We see it as a real grass-roots community effort. We have a lot of community support in Kodiak and the Pribilofs too."
Initial efforts will be led by Sara Persselin, a research biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Kodiak, with help from Celeste Leroux, an Alaska Sea Grant graduate student at UAF.
The small-scale beginning is essential to understanding nutritional and culturing needs of red king crab in captivity, Allee said. If their effort proves successful, it could open the door to construction of large-scale crab hatcheries that would seed Alaska waters with tens of millions of king crab in a bid to jump-start sluggish wild production, he said.
The hatcheries might operate like the Alaska salmon hatcheries, which release hundreds of millions of juvenile salmon into the wild to grow to adult size and be caught by fishermen.
Allee said a large-scale hatchery release of king crab is still years away.
"Right now, we have to prove the feasibility of the idea," he said. "There are lots of questions to be answered before investing in hatcheries on the scale used to enhance wild salmon stocks."
Researchers hope to "fingerprint" the juvenile crab in captivity so biologists can discriminate between hatchery stocks and wild stocks.
The project must first establish that planting hatchery stock is feasible and that it meets the approval of state Fish and Game officials, who have permitting and management authority.
In conjunction with the rehabilitation plan, Sea Grant has hired Gordon Kruse, a professor at the UA Southeast School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, to retrospectively analyze the Kodiak red king crab fishery, Allee said. Kruse's studies should give biologists more answers on the decline of the once-lucrative fishery, Allee said.
