Billions of crabs went missing around Alaska. Scientists now know what happened to them | CNN
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Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death.
  • HuddaBudda
    29•8 months ago

    6 billion down to 200,000 in 3 years. Give or take a few thousands

    We might end up putting these guys on the endangered species list to protect them. If it continues at this rate it may not even matter.

    They found that the temperature of the water was not above the species’ thermal limits, but it did increase their caloric needs considerably (see the Perspective by Kruse). This increase, in conjunction with a restriction in range, led to an unexpected mass starvation event.

    So crabs eat more in warmer seasons, and they didn’t have enough food. Good news is they will survive if the temperature doesn’t increase another 1-2 degrees. Bad news is, we are still on track for that.

    So it looks like a lot of us are going to have to get used to synthetic crab for a bit.

    • TWeaKEnglish
      18•8 months ago

      I think it’s more impactful if you write the numbers out fully, 6,000,000,000 down to 200,000. That’s 0.00003% of the population remaining

      Edit: Statistically, you could say something is 100% certain if there are 6 standard deviations, or 99.9999998%. This is more than 5 standard deviations; more than 99.99994% of the population has been eradicated. I think it’s all but certain that snow crabs will end up on the endangered species list.

      • @lolrightythen@lemmy.world
        7•8 months ago

        Kudos for the mathematical perspective. It seems wild to me that these crabs aren’t instantly considered critically endangered. Perhaps more evidence is required to confirm the data.

        Of course I didn’t read the article, but harvesting doesn’t help. I live about as far inland as you can get (not Russia, tho) and there are always “fresh” snow crab legs at the local grocery store.

        • TWeaKEnglish
          3•8 months ago

          Kudos for the mathematical perspective.

          You should probably take it with a pinch of salt, it’s been forever since I’ve actually done statistics :o) I just remember the 6 sigma certainty thing when I used to study Biochemistry, I may well have applied it wrong here hah.

          Harvesting won’t help from now on, with such a small population, but it likely wasn’t a factor in reducing the population from 6 billion.

      • @Nudding@lemmy.world
        3•8 months ago

        Seems like a pretty large domino, or am I wrong? Like how much biomass is that taken out of the food chain?

        • TWeaKEnglish
          4•8 months ago

          One type of snow crab has adults reaching 1-4 lbs, or 0.45 to 1.81 kg, so the round numbers would perhaps be either 2 lbs or 1 kg. Sticking with metric for laziness that’s 5,999,800 tonnes of crab. It’s roughly about the same for imperial tons also.

    • @Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4•8 months ago

      Then you have to consider, what sea life eats the crabs? What eats whatever those are… etc etc. This is how the end begins in the oceans.