King crabs are too successful as a species and therefore must be exterminated says the WWF. Biodiversity is threatened says the alarmist message! It will not be long before they start demanding the extermination of humans who are encroaching on other species.
Yngve Pedersen fishing for King Crabs: image SvD FOTO: BJÖRN LINDAHL
From Svenska Dagbladet (free translation):
They are large and are served as a delicacy all over the world. Along the windy Finnmark coast in northern Norway, they have become a welcome sideline providing a turnover of 100 million kronor just as a raw material. It does not help. Exterminate every single one, believes the World Widlife Fund.
We are talking about king crabs, giant crabs, originally from Kamchatka on the Russian Pacific coast. From 1961 to 1969 they were transplanted into the Barents Sea to provide the residents of Murmansk with more food sources. 2500 adult crabs were transported by air and the Trans-Siberian railroad, and were released into the sea.
The population of the Kola Peninsula was briefed by radio and all the fishermen were asked to inform the authorities if they found any crabs. Five years passed without any being found. But then in 1974 a fisherman caught a queen crab. The shell of that crab is still kept at the Polar Research Institute in Murmansk.
But in the early 1990’s, the number of crabs exploded. Today the Russian quota is 3.2 million crabs per year. In Norway, they catch just over 300 000 crabs. The problem is that the crabs are voracious and will eat almost anything they can find on the seabed.The WWF has now reported Norway to the International Council on Biological Diversity and has demanded that the species be exterminated as an “alien” species and it has been blacklisted by the Council. “It is crazy to let the stock grow further. Nine out of ten species in the Varanger Fjord has disappeared, “says Nina Jensen of WWF Norway.
But Norwegian marine biologists at Havsforskningsinstituttet in Bergen think it is just an exaggeration. “It is not true that nine out of ten species have disappeared. But the crabs have significant negative consequences, but what we know about nature is that it will recover when the crabs have left the area”, said Jan H. Sundet.
The largest crabs can weigh seven kilos, but after the stock began to be taxed, the average weight remained at 3-4 kg. The maximum paid was 90 NOK per kg. Svenska Dagbladet followed crab fisherman Yngve Pedersen from Bugøynes, located in Finnmark about fifty km from the Russian border, as he brought up a large catch of crabs in the Varanger Fjord.
“I started to fish for crabs 1998. This year I have a quota of 2800 kilos, for which I get at least 50 kronor a kilo. So I earned 200 000 kronor on crab this year. Compared with other kinds of fishing, it is an easy job. A dead cod is placed on a hook as bait inside the large cage. The crabs crawl in and most are not able to crawl out again. An orange buoy marks the location of the cages and all that is needed is to hoist it up and empty it over the catch table. Injured crabs with missing claws are discarded. “It is perhaps 10-15 percent of them. But the claw grows back”, said Yngve Pedersen.
He himself has an ambivalent relationship with the crabs. “They do great damage to the nets when we fish cod and eat all the bait when fishing by line. But our crab quota is in a sense a compensation for that. But the crab are not at home here, so if it were possible to eradicate them I would not have anything against it. “But I do not think it is possible. The Russians do not have any such plans and new crabs arrive all the time. We may be able to reduce the stock so that it pays better to catch them, that’s all”.
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