PETERSBURG, Alaska (AP) — The summer season for the commercial Dungeness crab fishery in Southeast Alaska will be three weeks shorter than usual.
KFSK.org reports (http://bit.ly/2smMqd3 ) the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Thursday the season will be closing July 25 after tallying the harvest from the first seven days of the season.
The catch from that first week came in at 605,000 pounds.
An estimated 2.25 million pounds are needed to keep the season open the full two months. The current estimate for the combined summer and fall harvest is 1.68 million pounds.
State lead crab biologist for the Southeast region Joe Stratman calls the season shortage “unprecedented” and says it’s the largest reduction Fish and Game has made to the fishing time to the summer season.
