Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report for King and Tanner Crab Fisheries of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Regions: Economic Status of the BSAI Crab Fisheries, 2013
October 18, 2013
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 Crab Rationalization (CR) Program. Statistics on harvesting and processing activity; effort; 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 BSAI crab fisheries managed under the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Bering Sea/ Aleutian Islands crab are currently prosecuted by an active fleet of 110 catcher vessels and three catcher/processors, and landed and processed at 21 processing facilities throughout the region. Of the 10 crab stocks managed under the FMP, seven are currently open to targeted fishing. 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 Eastern Bering Sea Tanner (EBT) crab fishery remained closed to targeted fishing for the 2012/13 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 2013. 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 two sets of primary indicators describing aggregate changes in gross volume and value of production, employment, and labor earnings in the crab processing and harvesting sectors.