Many participants in Alaska fisheries regard Alaska management as the best in the world and sometimes dismiss foreign fishery management as being unsustainable. However, recent reporting on the Barents Sea king crab fishery has shed light on some interesting details of a crab fishery which is proving to be a significant and evidently a long-term competitor for Alaska king crab.

Russian scientists introduced non-native king crab into the Barents Sea, reportedly during the 1960s, about 30 years after a first failed attempt during the Stalin era. Today those crab are harvested commercially by Russian and Norwegian fishermen, under cooperative management between the two countries.

Barents Sea king crab are very large, reportedly averaging 9.9 pounds per crab, due to the management system which bases quotas on number of crab rather than poundage of the harvest. Harvesters target large crab using modified pots with very large mesh, which allow [relatively] small crab to easily escape the pot and remain on the bottom.

While king crab in the Barents sea are genetically identical to the Bering Sea stock (the ���pioneer��� crab were transplanted from the Bering Sea) the combination of favorable ocean conditions and selective fishing has apparently produced a large and healthy stock of crab. Russia���s 2006 quota was set at 3 million crab and Norway���s quota at 300,000 crab. Based on the reported average size, this amounts to a Barents Sea harvest of nearly 33 million pounds, double Alaska���s 2005 king crab quota of 16.5 million pounds.