Population collapse destroys Alaskan snow crab season – Media wrongly blamed for climate change – Sharp drop because of that?
Are from ClimateREALITY
The media is abuzz this week with stories regarding the cancellation of the Alaskan Snow Crab season for the first time in 2022. The media such as Bloomberg are falsely claiming the snow crab decline is due to climate change, citing only supportive experts. This is wrong. Evidence suggests that other factors have led to a sharp decline in snow crab populations.
In one Bloomberg article, titled, “Alaska snow crab collapse could be linked to climate changeWriter Zahra Hirji stated:
Alaska officials recently canceled the Bering Sea snow crab season for the first time after scientists discovered a reduce the number of crabs. Climate change is the number one suspect in school dropouts. (emphasis mine).
“We’re still trying to find it, but there are certainly very clear signs,” said Michael Litzow, director of the shellfish assessment program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). clarity on the role of climate change in the collapse. Annual survey of the Bering Sea snow crab population. (Snow crabs are also found in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska.)
In fact, the climate change link is just an opinion.
Another story, sourced from the Alaska Trade Review, reprinted in Anchorage Daily News (DNA) by Elizabeth Earl, also blamed climate change for the decline of crabs: Scientists point out that climate change may be to blame for the decline in Alaskan snow crabs. Says: “There is no consensus on why stocks fell in the first place. Increasingly, however, models seem to indicate that it is due to an increase in temperature that is related to climate change.”
There is no consensus, but let’s trust computer models over actual data. Where have we heard that before? Like Climate realism discussed many times, here and here, for example, climate models for air temperatures are severely flawed when making forecasts much higher than recorded temperatures. There is no reason to believe that seawater temperature models will be better.
Many factors are contributing to the decline of snow crabs. Long-term climate change is not the dominant issue among them.
Fortunately, not all media are as gullible as Bloomberg or DNA, suggesting that snow crab declines are due to other factors such as predation, overfishing and naturally warming waters.
Guardiansfor example, almost always blaming climate change for anything bad that happens, noted in their story, Alaska cancels snow crab season due to population decline (emphasis mine):
“Causes are being studied but likely include increased predation and stress due to warmer water. “
No mention of “climate change” by Guardians. We will return to the issue of “warmer water” later in this article.
Back in 2017, when crab populations first started to decline, New York Times (NYT) said this in China’s appetite pushes seafood to the brink.
Overfishing is depleting oceans globally, with 90% of the world’s fishery either fully exploited or facing collapse, according to the report. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Are from Russian emperor crab fisherman west of the Bering Sea to Mexican train The poaching of snapper off Florida’s coast and unsustainable fishing practices threaten the lives of millions of people in developing countries who depend on the sea for income and food, experts say. Products.
Surprisingly, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) echoes that point in the story, “Illegal fishing puts crab populations at risk“, Note” A new WWF study has revealed crab populations in the Russian Far East are at risk of decline due to overexploitation from illegal fishing. “
Funny, Elizabeth Earl, journalist wrote Anchorage Daily News the previous story was written in February 2022, Bering Sea snow crabs are considered ‘overfished’:
In October, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined that in today’s low numbers, the Bering Sea snow crab – also known as opilio crab – is officially overfished.
But now Earl is blaming climate change.
While so-called experts are blamed by less informed journalists on warmer water for climate change, that’s not true. Instead, a prolonged La Nina event raised temperatures in the seas inhabited by snow crabs.
In October 2020 at Alaska News Source story, titled “The strongest La Niña underway in a decade” reported:
La Niña is part of a natural climate pattern known as El Niño Southern Oscillation, a scientific term that describes fluctuating temperature changes between oceans and the atmosphere in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. La Niña is called the cold phase while El Niño is called the warm phase.
Latest satellite image of sea surface temperature shows the giant La Niña form in blue in Figure 1 below.
The downside to this particular and ongoing La Niña ocean pattern is that it is affecting the Bering Sea, altering ocean currents so that warmer water is pushed northward.
These El Niño and La Niña events are natural patterns over millions of years.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has a page about the problem where actually reported El Niño and La Niña ocean patterns are completely natural. The UN report says there is no human impact on them, stating:
Is El Niño caused by climate change?
No. El Niño events are not caused by climate change – they are a recurring natural phenomenon that has happened for thousands of years.
Can we prevent El Niño and La Niña from happening?
No, El Niño and La Niña are naturally occurring and anthropogenic climate patterns that are unlikely to directly affect their onset, intensity, or duration.
The collapse in crab populations has happened before, before climate change became cause on the media. Note this image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows populations of Bering sea crabs since 1980 (Figure 2, below).
According to the data in Figure 2, in 1985, the Bering sea crab population suffered an accident.
What happened after that? The La Niña events of 1984–1985.
Evidence clearly demonstrates that the current major crash of Bering Sea crab populations is due to a combination of overfishing and the largest La Niña event in a decade. One doesn’t have to be a scientist to understand this.
Sadly, journalists like Hirji and Earl, and corporate media outlets like Bloomberg and Anchorage Daily News, would rather promote scare stories about climate change than facts about the causes of snow crab decline. Climate change is not the cause and trying to prevent such population decline in the future by combating climate change will not help crab populations but will also waste a scarce resource.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of and behind the camera as an online television meteorologist since 1978, and now does daily radio forecasts. He has created graphical weather display systems for television, specialized weather instruments, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed articles on climate issues. He runs the world’s most viewed website on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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