The end of fishing for Alaska's prized Red King Crab?
It's been a while since I wrote a science communication article. In September, I was lucky enough to visit Alaska and Canada on a final year university field trip. I became fascinated by the coastal ecosystems and fisheries there, and how climate change is impacting them, and have since decided to translate some of my own reading of papers into a more digestible article... It sounds like a scene from a horror movie. Dozens of tanks lining a laboratory, each filled with seawater bubbling away with a lone crab inside. But this was no sci-fi experiment. This was the Alaska Fisheries Science Centre’s Kodiak Laboratory when a team of marine biologists decided to investigate how climate change might affect one particular species: the Red King Crab. But why this species? Red King Crabs (RKCs) are central to the Alaskan fishing industry thanks to their high market value. For context, whilst shipping vessels earn around 5 USD/lb for King salmon (considered a delicacy), RKCs go for double