Crabs are disappearing across the world and nobody is talking about it. Across the globe, populations have dropped by at most 90% in 2022. Officials in Alaska and the UK are now trying to understand fully what happened to the populations and how to prevent another mass death of crabs before they all go extinct. In October of 2022, the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game canceled all snow crab, red king crab, and blue king crab seasons for 2022-2023. 

The depopulation of crabs across the globe is identified due to many factors in the Bering and North Sea that have been hurting crab populations in these regions. Alaskan officials have identified that changing temperatures have sent crabs north more and more often, which has been hurting catches and sending crabs out of their natural habitat. Another issue is the Ocean becoming more acidic and predators having an easier time eating crabs within their life cycle, thinning down mates and killing off the ability to have a successful life cycle of crab life. Crabs in the North Sea have also been identified with a possible new disease that crabs have never had to face before, causing a mass genocide of crabs in the North Sea. These new factors in crabs’ life cycle are not just affecting them, but affecting the entire ocean’s population that is especially being seen in crabs during this time. 

Many things are trying to be done to help with crab life as the population drops. The department of fish and game in Alaska has already suspended crab hunting in Alaska during this time and has urged people to not fish for many different popular crab species during this year. The UK has started multiple studies into the new disease that crabs could face and how to combat it in the future. Hopefully these mandates can help provide an upturn in the crab population that have been injured throughout the world. While these things have helped there is still lots of work and abilities that others can help with, especially protecting oceans through less waste and less usage of polluting materials.

Crab populations have decreased in a major way across the world, so now it’s the world’s turn to make sure that many of the different species of crabs do not go extinct like the many animals before them. The usage of less waste materials and helping stop pollution in general is a step in the right direction, as well as stopping overfishing and poaching that can kill off many species across the world. Without doing that then many different species will continue to decline in population until they go extinct, even if they are delicious or not.