February 1, 2021 — The harvest for Dungeness crab in Southeast Alaska’s commercial fishing season is the second largest on record. The catch from the fall fishery added to one of the few bright spots from last year.
A few areas of Southeast’s commercial Dungeness crab season are still open through February but most areas closed at the end of November. The estimate for the fall harvest is 813,000 pounds. That’s down slightly from recent years. But the 2020 summer harvest was so large–at 5.87 million pounds–that it still makes the total season harvest the second largest ever.
“What we saw last year was a big harvest, it was a big season poundage wise,” said Joe Stratman, Southeast’s lead crab manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The total season harvest for the summer and fall fisheries is 6.68 million pounds. That’s far above the ten-year average, which is 3.28 million pounds but just under the record breaking year of 2002-03.