Gabriel Prout is grateful for a modest haul of king crab, but it’s the vanishing of another crustacean variety that has the fishing port in Kodiak, Alaska, bracing for financial fallout; for the second year in a row, the lucrative snow crab season has been canceled.
“We’re still definitely in survival mode trying to find a way to stay in business,” he told CBS News.
When the season was canceled last year, there was a sense of confusion among the Alaska crab fisher community. Now, a sense of panic is taking hold in the state’s fisheries, which produce 60% of the nation’s seafood.
“It’s just still extremely difficult to fathom how we could go from a healthy population in the Bering Sea to two closures in a row,” Prout said.
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And while he is barely holding on, others — like Joshua Songstad — have lost almost everything.
“All of a sudden, now I’m at home with no income and really not much to do,” Songstad said.