(seafood.com) The ADF&G announced the 2012/13 snow crab quota will be cut by 25% from the 2011/12 levels.
This is slightly more than the industry expectation coming out of last month's plan team meetings in Seattle, where a 20% cut was surmised.
The total for 2012/13 will be 66.35 million pounds, compared to a TAC of 88.894 million pounds last year. Despite the record-breaking ice cover and a season extension, 100% of the 2011/12 quota was caught.
Interestingly, the total mature biomass for snow crab has increased over last year, to 1.134 billion pounds. In 2011/12 it was 1.107 billion pounds. However the fishery only targets large legal size males, and despite the increase in biomass the amount of legal size males available to the fishery decreased.
The Canadian snow crab quota, which last year totaled around around 90,000 tons across all provinces, will not be announced until April of 2013. The reduction in quota may help keep the snow crab market steady, after about a 20% decline in price in 2011.