“If you lose ice, you lose twice as much water,” Michael Rizzo, NOAA shellfish assessment program manager, told me. “Cold water, that’s what they do best. They’re arctic animals.”
Snow crab can rebound in a few years, unless there is a period of warm water. But if warming trends continue as scientists predict, marine heatwaves will return, putting pressure on crab populations again.
scattered bones A wild region of St. Paul Island like the Valley of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. Reindeer ribs, seal teeth, fox femurs, whale spines, and airglow bird skulls hide in the grass and along rocky shores, evidence of wildlife and a rich natural environment. 200 years of killing seals.
When I visited the office of city administrator Phil Zabadil, Akrina’s husband, I found several sea lion shoulder bones on a coffee table. Called the “yes/no” bone, the bone has a fin on top and a heavy ball at one end. At St. Paul they work like a magic eight ball. If you drop one and it falls with the fin facing right, then the answer to the question is yes. If it falls facing left, the answer is no. One of her big ones was described as “a big decision maker in the city of St. Paul.” Another one of hers was labeled “Budget Bones.”
Zavadil said the long-term health of the town had not yet been completely dire when it came to the sudden loss of crabs. The company invested during the heyday of crab fishing, and with a few budget cuts it could survive for another decade.
“That is, unless something dramatic happens. “Hopefully the crabs will come back to some level.”
Zabadir said the simplest economic solution to the collapse of the crab fishery would be to convert factories to process other fish. There were some regulatory hurdles, but they weren’t insurmountable. City leaders were also exploring marine aquaculture, including seaweed, sea cucumber and sea urchin farming. That will require finding a market and testing mariculture methods in the St. Paul waters. He said the fastest schedule would probably take him three years. Or you could promote tourism. The island receives about 300 visitors a year, mostly avid birdwatchers.
“But I would consider doubling it,” he said.
The trick was to stabilize the economy before too many working-age adults left. There was already more work than people to fill. Elderly people were dying and young families were moving out.
“Someone came to me the other day and said, ‘The village is dying,'” he said, but he didn’t think so. There were people still working and there were many solutions to try.
“If we do nothing, there is room for vigilance,” he said. “We’re just trying to work things out and do the best we can.”
Nephew of Aquilina Restenkov Aaron Restenkov is an island warden for the tribal government, whose job it is to monitor wildlife and oversee the removal of the endless stream of trash that wash up on shore. He drove me along a bumpy coastal road to see a beach that would soon be teeming with seals.
