The population of snow crabs in the Bering Sea has crashed since 2018, probably due to starvation as a result of a marine heatwave
More than 10 billion snow crabs in the sea off Alaska have disappeared over the past few years. Marine biologists have linked the population crash to a 2018 heatwave which may have led to mass starvation.at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington DC and his colleagues analysed the organisation’s annual surveys of the Bering Sea to uncover the reason behind the disappearance of the crabs.Between 2018 and 2021, the population fell by 10 billion, or around 90 per cent.
Snow crabs fare best in cold waters, which means as the sea warms up, they expend more energy to regulate their body temperature by moving around. By modelling the crab population and their energy requirements under different conditions, the team found that there wasn’t enough food to support this warmer, hungrier population.“We think that starvation played a big role in the collapse,” says Szuwalski. “From 2017 to 2018, the calories they needed quadrupled.
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