Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska.
As global warming warms oceans and melts sea ice, temperatures around the Arctic have been warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. This significantly affects the ecosystems in the Arctic and high-altitude waters. Snow crabs are cold-water species that mainly live in water where temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius. Researchers recently found that their population dropped from eight billion in 2018 to just one billion in 2021. The direct cause of the decline is overfishing, catching more than they can naturally replace. But the root cause is global warming. If you keep catching the same number of crabs each year while the total population declines by global warming, you will deplete the population. In fact, just in 2021 and 2022, the population of mature male snow crabs declined by 40%. Since global warming cannot be stopped immediately, what the Alaskan fishery management can do to conserve the species’ population is to ban fishing for some time. Another big blow to Alaska’s fishing industry, which has been coping with the rapid change in the environment and ecosystems of the Arctic regions.
Read the article and learn about what is going on under Alaska’s water.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/16/us/alaska-snow-crab-harvest-canceled-climate/index.html
Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska.
As global warming warms oceans and melts sea ice, temperatures around the Arctic have been warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. This significantly affects the ecosystems in the Arctic and high-altitude waters. Snow crabs are cold-water species that mainly live in water where temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius. Researchers recently found that their population dropped from eight billion in 2018 to just one billion in 2021. The direct cause of the decline is overfishing, catching more than they can naturally replace. But the root cause is global warming. If you keep catching the same number of crabs each year while the total population declines by global warming, you will deplete the population. In fact, just in 2021 and 2022, the population of mature male snow crabs declined by 40%. Since global warming cannot be stopped immediately, what the Alaskan fishery management can do to conserve the species’ population is to ban fishing for some time. Another big blow to Alaska’s fishing industry, which has been coping with the rapid change in the environment and ecosystems of the Arctic regions.
Read the article and learn about what is going on under Alaska’s water.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/16/us/alaska-snow-crab-harvest-canceled-climate/index.html
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