January 9, 2014 — In the last week of September, as the northern days were rapidly growing shorter, three NOAA Fisheries biologists dove to the bottom of Cozy Cove. On the east side of Kodiak Island and opening into the vast and frigid Gulf of Alaska, the cove is the site of an experiment that's never been tried before.
The biologists, all three of them expert cold water divers, planted stakes in the gravelly bottom and ran lines between them, marking out a dozen 5-by-5-meter plots. After squaring the lines, they opened small jars and emptied the contents into the plots: a total of 5,000 juvenile red king crabs. The crabs were each about the size of a pencil eraser and had been hatched and raised at the Alutiq Pride Hatchery in Seward, Alaska. Scientists have spent the last seven years learning through trial and error how to collect fertilized eggs from wild female crabs and raise the resulting larvae to juvenile size. Now the research was entering phase two.
"It's been a long time in development," said Pete Cummiskey, one of the NOAA Fisheries biologists who dove that day. "But we're finally starting field trials, and now we'll see what happens."
By releasing them in different densities in each plot, and then coming back to check on their progress weekly, Cummiskey and his colleagues hope to determine the release density that yields the highest rate of survival. The research is organized by the Alaska King Crab Research, Rehabilitation, and Biology program, a partnership of government and academic scientists and community and industry groups interested in the future of crab.
If all goes well, wild red king crab stocks in the Gulf of Alaska and blue king crab in the Bering Sea might someday be supplemented by hatchery-raised cousins. But whether or not that day comes, the research is already paying off.
"This is the first controlled experiment that looks at what happens to known quantities and densities of juvenile king crab over time," Cummiskey said, "and the knowledge we gain will help us to sustainably manage the wild populations that are already out there."