Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report for the King and Tanner Crab Fisheries of the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Area : Economic Status of the BSAI King and Tanner Crab Fisheries Off Alaska, 2015
October 18, 2015
This report presents information on economic activity in commercial crab fisheries currently managed under the Federal Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Bering Sea and Aleutian and Islands King and Tanner Crab (BSAI crab), with attention to the subset of fisheries included in the CrabV Rationalization (CR) Program. Statistics on harvesting and processing activity; e↵ort; revenue; labor employment and compensation; operational costs; and quota ownership, usage and disposition among participants in the fisheries are provided. Additionally, this report provides a summary of BSAI crab-related research being undertaken by the Economic and Social Sciences Research Program (ESSRP) at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC).
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 107 catcher vessels and two catcher processors, and landed and processed at 17 processing facilities throughout the region. Of the 10 crab stocks and 11 fisheries managed under the FMP1, seven 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, and the Saint Matthew blue king (SMB) crab fishery was closed for the 2013/14 season under the State of Alaska's management strategy.
This report provides a comprehensive presentation of available information on status and trends in a variety of indicators of economic performance of BSAI crab fisheries for 2014. The full report 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 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.