Sea ice is wreaking havoc on the Bering Sea snow crab harvest for the second time this season. 

It happened in a single day.  The ice was way up north, fishing was good, and then overnight the ice was everywhere, covering up pots, blocking harbors and generally causing problems for the crabbers.

National Weather Service ice forecaster Becky Legatt says the Bering Sea ice edge moved south more than 50 miles in a single day last week, effectively shutting down the fishing grounds.

“Just the northerly push this year.  The ice is so thick out there that if we get any kind of northerly component to the winds that’s sticking around for a little bit of time, it’s pushing that ice south, covering up all the crab grounds.”

The ice wasn’t thin either. Up near St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs, Legatt says the ice reached two feet thick in places.

“Looking at our records that date back 27 years, if you’re looking at the records from January to the end of February, this is the most persistent ice pack we’ve had at St. Paul and St. George.”

Strong winds from the south pushed the ice edge back over the weekend, but Legatt isn’t expecting a dramatic retreat in the near future.  Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Heather Fitch says some boats have already taken a hit.

“Anecdotal reports say there’s probably a few hundred pots under the ice right now.”

Fitch says no one is reporting their pots lost just yet, but the ice has a tendency to drag pots around and shear off the buoys that mark their location.  Each pot costs upwards of a thousand dollars, so losing a few dozen is pretty big deal for a boat. 

For the fishery as a whole though, the ice might mean even bigger problems.  With only twelve weeks left in the season, some fishermen are getting anxious about reaching the quota.  It almost doubled this year, to 89 million pounds and half of that has to be delivered to processors in the Pribilofs, with a lot of it going to the Trident processing plant on St. Paul Island.  But Jake Jacobsen, the executive director of Inter-Cooperative Exchange, the largest crabber coop, says getting to St. Paul has been a challenge this winter.

“The crab that’s headed to St. Paul - those deliveries have slowed way down.  There’s still some northern crab being processed on the R.M. Thorstenson, the floating processor owned by Icicle Seafoods.  But we still have just a little less than half of the crab - that ICE [Inter-Cooperative Exchange] has remaining – has to be delivered to the north.  So we still have 11 million pounds that needs to go into St. Paul.”

Jacobsen says Inter-Cooperative Exchange has asked Fish and Game to consider a granting a season extension.

“They’ve expressed some concerns about doing that.  We’re discussing options with them now.  They haven’t ruled out a season extension altogether, but they don’t seem to be very excited about it either.”

Jacobsen says the agency is mostly worried about interfering with the summer molting period for snow crab.  Fish and Game couldn't comment other than to say it’s considering all options. 

So far, the harvest has averaged about 4.4 million pounds a week.  If deliveries continue at that rate, an extension might not be necessary, but Jacobsen isn’t particularly optimistic.

“Looks like there’s more northerly in the forecast, so I don’t see an end to it real soon.”

Forty-nine percent of the snow crab quota had been harvested as of Monday morning.