North Pacific council's SSC keeps snow crab buffer at 40%, not 50%

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee agreed Monday in Anchorage to keep a 40 percent buffer below the Bering Sea snow crab overfishing limit of 21.22 kilotons, declining the Crab Plan Team's call for a 50 percent buffer. That sets an acceptable biological catch of 12.73 kilotons, about 28 million pounds, the ceiling for Alaska's catch limit. Last year's figures were an ABC of 12.07 kilotons and a TAC, or catch limit, of 4.22 kilotons, about 9.3 million pounds.

The stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring, but it remains under a rebuilding plan following a 2021 overfished declaration. The plan team pointed to 3.5 percent of newly matured males reaching industry-preferred size and about 85 mature females for every large male. The committee said those concerns were unchanged from last year's assessment.

Ecosystem profile author Erin Fedewa said most females carried full clutches, but "it's unknown if those mature females mated with snow crab or if they mated with Tanner crab."

The committee also took up hybrids. It said it would join a council-convened workshop on Bering Sea snow-Tanner crab hybrids, but it stopped short of recommending the council hold one. The management plan recognizes only snow crab and Tanner crab as species, so hybrids get recorded as one or the other, mostly as snow crab.

Corey Lesher of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers told the committee the summer survey found industry-preferred-size male hybrids at "a new time series high with an estimated 52 million-plus pounds." Under a 1-million-pound hybrid harvest opportunity the state added to the snow crab quota last season, an estimated 678,000 pounds of hybrids were landed. His group has asked in writing for the Crab Plan Team to set separate hybrid harvest limits. Witnesses requested a workshop on the issue, and Scott Goodman of the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation offered to help lead one.

Committee members said no one has yet evaluated whether hybrids need their own conservation and management measures under the national standards that govern federal fisheries.

Because the population model again failed to converge, managers relied on a survey smoother for this year's snow crab assessment. The council receives the full report Friday and meets through Oct. 13.