You Don’t Have Crabs!

Ordinarily, this headline would be good news. But in this case, we’re talking about Alaska’s snow crabs. These aren’t the King crabs that weigh as much as 20 pounds a piece. But snow crabs still weigh two to four pounds and they don’t move particularly quickly. So it’s puzzling that no one is quite sure where they went. The disappearance is terrible news for those who make a living off catching and selling them, and it could be terrible news for the environment as well. According to one expert, we’re in a pinch. “The magnitude of biomass could not all have moved without us detecting it. We believe we had a very large mortality event, which points to an extreme event that we have never seen before in the Bering Sea.’ He said the crabs, perhaps because of heightened sensitivity to their ecosystem, are like the canary in a coal mine — for the climate and those who make their living from crabbing.'” Why is this big news? Because we’re all in the coal mine along with the crabs and the canaries. Things are changing fast, and we’re just, er, scratching the surface. WaPo (Gift Article): Alaska’s snow crabs have disappeared. Where they went is a mystery.

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