Deadliest Catch - Unemployment And Cut Backs Hit The Bering Sea

Well the Cornelia Marie released a statement today confirming some of the rumors and some of my suspicions.

The Cornelia Marie it appears will not be fishing for Red King Crab this season. Josh and Jake Harris will be deckhands on other vessels as I had earlier posted. The rumors on that one were everywhere.

Troy "Chief" Huls will continue working on the tug.

It looks like Ryan Simpson is working in the yards on the Incentive. I had asked Ryan whether he was working on the Cornelia Marie or the Incentive because he was posting great pictures of the Incentive. I wasn't sure if he was working in the yards on the Cornelia Marie and said oh that would make a great picture of the Incentive or if he was actually working on the Incentive. I asked him, he didn't answer me, I say with a pout.

Dale Pruitt will be working on the Kodiak for cod. I don't know about Kings. That was one I hadn't heard.

Check out Morgan's complete article on the Cornelia Marie here. Great stuff on the Cornelia Marie.

Hopefully the Cornelia Marie is getting that engine overhauled so they can fish Opies without issues if you know what I mean. It's time for that crew to have things go their way for a change. Hopefully we will see the Cornelia Marie with her new paint job for Opies. It just hard to imagine Deadliest Catch with out the Cornelia Marie.

As you may or may not have seen this week. The quota for Red Kings was dramatically reduced this year. 47-50 % depending on who's article you look at. Either number isn't good for our guys.

If you've followed this show since the beginning maybe you remember season one. The boats fished in a derby fishing style. The boats would go out and catch as much as they could as fast as the could. They would get a phone call that saying red king crab season ends in 24 hours, so they would pull the pots and whatever that had caught was pretty much it.

Then they switched to the quota system which put many of the smaller vessels out of work. The fish and game commission assigned each vessel a set amount of crab to catch based previous seasons catches I believe. So for example one vessel may be allowed to catch 5,000 pounds while another could catch 100,000 pounds. When they switched to the quota style fishing many of the smaller fishing vessels quit fishing. It just wasn't worth their time.

In season one there were 251 vessels in the fleet. In season two there were only 89. The boats that were no longer fishing started leasing their quota's to the vessels still fishing. Season 8 will have an even smaller fleet.

With all of these changes my mind whirls with questions. On the Northwestern, if they pick up Jake Harris as it has been rumored and Edgar Hansen because he said he wanted to come back for Kings, that is two additional bodies on the Northwestern. Will someone else on the ship get left behind or worse two someones? Who will it be? Maybe Kevin Blakely the new guy from last season? It's hard to imagine they would take out an extra man to split another share of an already drastically reduced quota. Who else would they leave behind? Jake Anderson or Matt Bradley, Norman and Nick are family would they leave them behind? I can't imagine any of them getting left behind.

Same deal on the Time Bandit. If they take out Josh Harris will they leave Travis Lofland or Eddie, Jr behind? I know Mike Fourtner was taking the boat to Dutch so I feel pretty comfortable that he will be there. But what about Eddie Sr or Scotty Hillstrand?

Will Dale Pruitt stay with the Kodiak for Kings and Opies? Dale has been a fisherman for quite sometime. I'm pretty sure he could be a deckhand or engineer. Makes me wonder how things between Adam McCalden and Captain Bill have been lately. My favorite deckhand, Jake Jolibois is his job safe?

With the quota cuts more vessels are hanging it up, more men will be left behind to look for work. To bring the quota's back up the crab need to reproduce.

So how fast does a crab reproduce? Yep, I googled it! Female Red King Crab carry thousands of eggs for about a year, the crabs reach adulthood in 4-5 years. I'm not sure how adulthood size compares to legal catch size. (Source) So this makes me wonder will the quotas be reduced for 4-5 years or longer?

Also in the above article it talks about the record largest king crab a male that had a leg span of 5 foot. It weighed 24 pounds. Can you imagine? A crab that size certainly wouldn't fit down the shoot they normally send the crab down. A crab that size would be like having a sea monster on board. Yep the Time Bandit boys would probably shoot it. Imagine getting pinched by that crab? Owwwwwww!

Another question that comes to mind. Are there less red king crab because so many have been caught over time or is this a result of oil spills or other contaminates?

All these unanswered questions and we have to wait until April? Man! That is seriously to long to have to wait!


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