WorldWide Drilling Resource

24 JULY 2014 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Helping the Alaskan King Crab Industry by Ray Roerick Sales Manager, Well-Vu, Inc. A few years back, we were ap- proached with a new twist on fishing with a camera. A grad student at the University of Alaska was working on a grant to study the king crab. She wanted to document the mating, growth, pred- ators, and overall behavior of the crab in their natural habitat over a period of time. Crabs, like a lot of our fisheries, are on the decline, and the study was funded to understand, improve, and in- crease (if possible) the crab population. Overfishing, climate change, predation by fish, and ocean acidification are all possible explanations, though it’s likely a host of factors. It would be an interesting experi- ment. Ben Daly (a Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska) was to take crabs into the Gulf of Alaska on tethers to see how they responded to their environment and potential predators. The action would be observed using underwater cameras with live-feed to the nearby shore. The final decision was to take three down hole cameras with 1000 feet of cable, solar panels to keep the batteries charged, and digital video recorders. The base was set up onshore and the cam- eras were taken out about 850-975 feet. The camera was attached to a float tethered to the bottom, and the camera was set to hang and observe the ocean floor. The cameras were connected to the 12-volt batteries, as were the re- cording devices. With the recorders, they could retrieve the videos on a reg- ular basis. The good part of the study is they got to better understand the king crab, and are preparing for the future. Both the red and blue varieties of Alaskan king crab have declined significantly, and as resource managers struggle to determine why, a small team of scien- tists in a most unlikely location is work- ing on an insurance policy - trying to raise crabs from the larval stage to juveniles in a hatchery setting. The idea isn’t to immediately begin seeding the Bering Sea or Gulf of Alaska with hatchery-raised youngsters, the sci- entists said. It is to see if it’s even fea- sible - in case it’s needed in the future. Ray Ray Roerick may be contacted via e-mail at admin@ worldwidedrillingresource.com