Billions of Snow Crabs Died in Hot Ocean
Billions of snow crabs have gone missing from Alaskan waters in recent years—an ominous trend that scientists are now linking to ocean heat waves. Research published last week in the journal Science looks into the estimated 10 billion snow crabs that disappeared from the waters of the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia from 2019 to 2021, a population crash from a record high in 2018. The study finds that the crabs may have starved to death, as their caloric needs quadrupled as the ocean got warmer and they weren’t able to find enough food. The research comes just a week after the state of Alaska canceled the snow crab harvest for the second year in a row, citing the low numbers. “The big take home for me from the paper, and just the whole experience in general, is that historically, fishery scientists had been very worried about overfishing — this has been our white whale, and in a lot of places we really solved that with management,” lead author Cody Szuwalski, a fishery biologist at NOAA, told CNN. “But climate change is really throwing a wrench into our plans, our models and our management systems.” (CNN, NBC, The Guardian)
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