The Bering Sea was once full of snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio), providing an abundant food source worth more than a quarter-billion dollars. But a few years ago, the crab populations crashed, with more than 90% disappearing, an estimated 47 billion animals vanishing. In 2022, crab fishing season was cancelled. Scientists hypothesized at the time that climate change was the culprit; now a recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change has confirmed it.
Marine biologists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed temperature at the bottom of the sea, algae bloom levels under the sea ice, ice cover and the makeup of Arctic snow crab communities from 1972 to 2022. In the process, they determined that the snow crab population has dramatically decreased as a result of heating from burning fossil fuels.
