Apparently the permits aren’t issued until just a few weeks before the season stars Oct 15.
The Captains have a crab quota that varies from year to year. Marine biologists monitor the crabs and decide how many can be harvested each season. That work should have been completed months ago.
A government shutdown isn’t about “the U.S. Department of the Interior doesn’t have enough money to issue 80 permits for Alaskan crab fishermen!” A government shutdown is about the U.S. House of Representatives refusing to give anyone the legal authority to spend money to carry on the functions of government:
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law” – The Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 9
Don’t like it? Tell the House of Representatives to knock it the hell off.
Already done. You’ll be happy to know that the Speaker of the House is in my district. Here, let me wipe a tear away I’m so proud.
I am happy. That he’s not from mine. Still feeling the shame from the last one who was.
Not everything is shut down. There’s skeleton crews keeping the lights on and performing essential functions. The Park Services seem to have plenty of guards to chase off tourists at the parks. Dept of Defense just returned 350,000 furloughed workers. There are some federal workers on the job.
What functions are considered essential seems to be a political decision. As someone said up thread, the Administration wants the shutdown to hurt as much as possible. Keep it on the front page of the news. Political gamesmanship at its ugliest and nastiest.
I just hope the Dems and Repubs really aren’t prepared to sacrifice the entire crab season just for politics.
I for one am shocked, shocked, that a government shutdown means that some functions of government are actually not taking place!
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How much pressure are the various species of crab in question under? I’m thinking not much. I don’t recall hearing that Alaskan king crab is threatened or endangered.
The crab fisheries are carefully managed. It could become endangered if quotas weren’t enforced. But that’s true of any fish or animal that is harvested.
Crabbers can only harvest the bigger crabs. They often show the deck crews checking crab size with a gauge on Deadliest Catch. They can get severe fines for having the wrong species of crab in their tanks. Those have to be sorted out and returned to the sea.
I’m surprised that the U.S. has successfully prevented foreign ships from harvesting crab in the Bering Sea. AFAIK the U.S. fishes their coastal waters and the Russians fish theirs. There is a boundary somewhere out in the Bering Sea that both sides observe.
If the crab season is canceled, then there should be a bigger harvest next year. At least for the captains that don’t lose their boats because of the shutdown.
And managing fisheries–setting quotas or size limits to protect the long-term viability of the fishery, and protecting it from foreign poachers–are things that are done by the government. Which is why it’s a bad idea to shut down the government, because then things that need to be done–like fisheries management–don’t get done.
I agree the gov’s role is very important in many areas and especially management of the fisheries. Hopefully the two political parties can work out a settlement that will last. I’d hate to see us right back in this bad situation five months from now.
Meanwhile, it’s ill advised to allow an entire industry to suffer just to make a political point. Some kind of stop gap solution needs to be found. Crabbing is unique because these people make a good chunk of their annual income in about six weeks time. It’s different from a furloughed worker who may lose three or four weeks pay. That hurts too, but not like losing 30% or even 40% of your entire annual income.
Then they should probably start camping out in front of their representatives’ homes and raising hell.
That’s not really helpful. Dopers have often described the US as a collection of countries.
Where are the crabs? States only go out three miles. A crab that’s more than three miles from the shore isn’t in Alaska, so Alaska wouldn’t be able to regulate it.
That’s state coverage. I’m surprised states still use the 18th century 3-mile limit (3 miles during the 18th century was the maximum range of land-based cannons.)
The US’s territorial waters around Alaska extend much father than 3 miles and, surprisingly, encroach into the Canadian shoreline:
No they’ve described state differences in culture as similar to country differences in culture especially when comparing Europe to the US.
The crab fishery collapsed years ago. The harvests were huge and so were the crustaceans. Then the crabs started getting smaller, as there was no regulation on harvest size. Then the harvest started shrinking, but still the crab boats took all they could get. Then the fishery crashed. This sort of thing has been happening for centuries for many species, including whales, salmon, fur seals, etc. The gigantic king crabs of old have not returned, far as I know. I remember my mother bringing back crab leg segments from trips to Kodiak when I was a child; two or three of those monsters was more than you could eat.
But you see crabbing isn’t the only industry that’s suffering because of this. Many others are as well. Just today in the local newspaper there was an article about how the craft brewery industry has a big problem: They are not allowed to start selling a new beer without an OK from some small division of ATF, and that division is shut down. They are complaining that their winter season may be in jeopardy. Why should the crabbers be helped but not the brewers?
The sooner the shutdown is over the better it will be for everyone. The news CNN is reporting today is encouraging. Maybe this will end before too many more people are hurt financially.
ace: when you hear about essential government services being allowed to continue, “essential” is not synonymous with “important.” Essential means things that are to protect health and safety (like doctors at VA hospitals and police officers to arrest bad guys), various constitutional functions (like each house of Congress and Federal judges), and a limited number of other things. A few agencies have a quirk in funding that allows them more access to funds, so they can run off of the unspent funds from last year.
But welcome to a government shutdown. Too bad there’s no popular TV show about how the US Department of Agriculture’s role in assisting the market in buying and selling hogs, because that is shut down, too. And there’s no show about food inspectors that keep contaminated spinach out of our grocery stores. And there’s no program that would illustrate how the safety of coal miners is jeopardized by having more than half of the Mine Safety and Health Administration sit at home with nothing to do.
The crabbers are in the same boat as a hell of a lot of other people. I can’t figure out a reason why they deserve a special exception that others aren’t getting.