Unalaska, AK – The Bering Sea snow crab season is drawing to a close. The fleet of 68 boats has already caught 97 percent of the 43.2 million pound total allowable catch. The TAC is down 8.5 million pounds from last year because of the crab stock rebuilding plan. So far into the season the catch per unit effort is also down slightly. Last year fishermen were pulling up 279 crabs per pot on average, but this year they are only getting 238. Each crab is weighing about the ten-year average - 1.3 pounds.

Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game ssistant area shellfish biologist Jeanette Alas said one thing that sets this year apart was the weather.

"This year we were pretty lucky because we didn't have a whole lot of ice that came down early in the season like we did last year and the year before. So I think that a lot of the vessels that fished early on were able to catch their quota without a whole lot of problems due to ice and weather."

She said that last year the sea ice moved south earlier in the season making fishing and delivering harder near St. Paul. Some boats even checked out of the fishery last year for a couple weeks then checked back in to wait for the ice to recede. That didn't happen this year.

Fishermen also encountered some problems with opilio-bairdi hybrids.

"This season was a little bit tricky for the fishermen in particular because western Bering Sea tanner crab was closed, and so they were not allowed to retain any bairdi crab incidentally. So that meant a lot of extra time and effort on deck sorting to make sure they did not get any bairdi in the tank."

That meant looking closer at the hybrids to determine which species they counted as. Hybrids are always counted as one species or another, depending on their eye color and the shape of their epistomal margin, or their upper lip.

Five to ten boats are still out fishing for the remaining 1 million pounds of snow crab. They have until mid- or late May to finish, depending on where they are fishing.