Economic Status Report Summary: BSAI Crab Fisheries, 2016
October 22, 2016
The Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands (BSAI) crab fisheries managed under the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Fishery Management Plan (FMP) are currently prosecuted by an active fleet of 115 catcher vessels and two-catcher processors and landed and processed at 14 processing facilities throughout the region. Of the 10 crab stocks and 11 fisheries managed under the FMP1, eight fisheries are currently open to targeted fishing. The Bering Sea Tanner (BST) crab fisheries reopened for targeted fishing for the 2013/14 season 2 after being closed since the 2010/11 season. Pribilof Islands red and blue king, and Western Aleutian red king crab stocks are currently designated overfished, as detailed in the assessments for these stocks. The Saint Matthew blue king (SMB) crab fishery was closed for the 2013/14 season under the State of Alaska’s management strategy, and reopened for the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons.
This report provides a brief summary of key indicators of economic status and performance of BSAI crab fisheries for the 2011 through 2015 calendar year operations. The full Economic Status Report for BSAI Crab Fisheries, 2016 (Crab Economic SAFE, currently being updated for annual release in February, 2017) provides detailed information regarding production, sales, revenue, and price indices in the harvesting and processing sectors, income, employment, and demographics of labor in both sectors, capital and operating expenditures in the fishery, quota share lease and sale market activity, changes in distribution of quota holdings, productivity in the harvesting sector, U.S. imports and exports of king and Tanner crab, price forecasts, performance metrics for catch share programs, and other information regarding data collection and ongoing economic and social science research related the BSAI crab fisheries and related communities. The following document summarizes three sets of primary indicators describing aggregate changes in gross volume and value of production, labor earnings and employment in the crab processing and harvesting sectors, and crab harvest quota leasing activity. Note that results presented below for 2015 calendar year fisheries are preliminary pending completion of data validation and additional analyses, and may be revised in the final update of the full Economic Status Report.