A team of marine biologists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fishery Science Center has solved the mystery of why approximately 10 billion snow crabs vanished from the Bering Sea back in 2018/2019—the water there was too warm for them.
In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group used data from previous studies on the way snow crabs respond to warmer temperatures to solve the mystery. Gordon Kruse, a member of the North Pacific Research Board, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the events that surrounded the population crash of the snow crabs and the work done by the team on this new effort to find out why.
