ADF&G cuts Southeast fall Dungeness crab season to 30 days

Southeast Alaska's commercial Dungeness fleet gets 30 days this fall, about half of what regulation would otherwise allow.

The season runs from 8 am Thursday, Oct. 1 to 11:59 pm Saturday, Oct. 31. Regulations would permit fishing through Nov. 30 across most of the region, and into February in some districts.

The short fall follows a short summer. That season closed July 25 after 40 days, three weeks early, because Fish and Game projected from the first full week of fishing that the total harvest would come in between 1.5 and 2.25 million pounds — under the threshold that triggers a full season. The fall length then follows automatically under the management plan.

The department has done this before, trimming the 2025 summer season by six days on the same basis. Stakeholders asked the Board of Fisheries in 2014 to remove threshold harvest limits from the plan entirely.

Permit holders should report lost pots to the nearest Alaska Wildlife Troopers office, and report suspected European green crab to the department. The invasive species has now been documented as far north as southern Etolin Island.