Crab research program prepares for egg hatch
Crab research program prepares for egg hatch
Submitted by Doug Schneider
Phone: (907) 474-7449
02/06/07
SEWARD, Alaska--It’s not even tourist season. Yet sometime in the next couple of months, the population of this small coastal town will surge into the hundreds of thousands. But few people will notice. There’s plenty of room for all.
The arrivals will be newborn red and blue king crab larvae, each only about the size of a finely sharpened pencil tip. In all, more than one million king crabs are expected to hatch at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Seward Marine Center in the coming weeks. The hatch will mark an important milestone in efforts aimed at one day rebuilding wild king crab stocks around Kodiak and the Pribilof Islands.