-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email The Bering Sea was once full of snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio), providing an abundant food source worth more than a quarter-billion dollars. But a few years ago, the crab populations crashed, with more than 90% disappearing, an estimated 47 billion animals vanishing. In 2022, crab fishing season was cancelled .
Scientists hypothesized at the time that climate change was the culprit; now a recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change has confirmed it. Related Climate change is making crabs lose their sense of smell — and seafood may never be the same Marine biologists from the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed temperature at the bottom of the sea, algae bloom levels under the sea ice, ice cover and the makeup of Arctic snow crab communities from 1972 to 2022. In the process, they determined that the snow crab population has dramatically decreased as a result of heating from burning fossil fuels. "The warming and loss of Bering Sea sea ice that caused the snow crab collapse wasn't natural climate variability, but instead was the consequence of human-caused climate change," lead author and NOAA scientist Dr.
Michael Litzow told Salon. Although the negative impact on snow crab fisheries is short-term for now, that may not remain the case. "The chance of getting very Arctic conditions in the traditional fishing grounds has gone from about 56% every year in the preindustrial climate to about 8% in the curr.