For 17 years, Laine Welch has covered the Alaska "fish beat" for print and broadcast. She also has worked in seafood processing, and "behind the counter" in retail and wholesale seafood businesses. Before coming to Alaska in 1986, Laine was well known in New England for her daily radio broadcasts of fish prices and landings at auctions in Boston and New Bedford, MA. Laine's goal is to make all people aware of the economic and social importance of the seafood industry to Alaska and the nation - from harvesters and business professionals, to those who simply eat fish occasionally. Also read Laine's Fish Factor column
May 19th
Baby king crab could soon be growing near downtown Kodiak: AK's 1st crab enhancement projectTiny king crab will soon be grown in a protected bay near downtown Kodiak, under the watchful care of researchers. It's the first attempt in Alaska to advance larval crab from the laboratory to the wild. The crab will be hatched by Bering sea females this fall at the Alutiiq Pride shellfish hatchery in Seward. By next summer, two hundred thousand baby crab will be moved to Trident basin, near downtown Kodiak.
There are two phases - larval rearing and then transplant - ultimate fate and survival and growth of these juvenile crab.
Brian Allee is director of the Alaska Sea Grant college program, a primary sponsor of the crab enhancement project.
"We'll be putting them in predator avoidance structures so the little critters won't end up as cod bait."
Once the crabs are outplanted from their hatchery home, it will be a matter of watching and waiting, says lead scientist Sara Persselin at the NOAA fisheries Near Island research facility in Kodiak.
"It takes about five years for a crab to mature, and eight years before it's market size. Up until then they're just molting and growing and hiding from predators and looking for food."
Persselin says the project will try and track the crab as they grow, which is pretty tricky.
"The difficlty with crabs is they molt so often it's hard to place any external tags on them because it will molt off with their shell. So the technology today uses genetic marking using micro satellite tags."
Persselin and Allee are among the many Alaska scientists and educators who are building on the momentum created in March when experts from around the world came to Kodiak to share knowledge about crab enhancement projects. The aim is to grow crabs to a certain size and then release them into the wild. Persselin says perhaps everyone will be able to observe the progress of the first crab enhancment project. A crab cam - you can log on to your computer and watch the baby crab.
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