An otter disaster: Wrangell seeks relief for Dungeness fishery decline

Crab fishery equipment. (City and Borough of Wrangell photo)

By Leilani Combs

Wrangell Sentinel

Crab fishing is practically synonymous with Alaska, but in recent years the Dungeness crab fishery has become less reliable. Many say that recovered sea otter populations are responsible for the decline. Now, after the summer commercial Dungeness season closed 20 days early, the borough is seeking solutions to support fishermen and push for more otter management.

At its Aug. 25 meeting, the borough assembly voted unanimously to declare a local disaster as a result of the early closure of the summer Dungeness fishery. This is just the latest step taken by Southeast fishing communities looking for effective management of the region’s booming sea otter population.

The declaration is intended to bring federal relief to crab fishermen and catalyze the formation of a Southeast shellfish fishing association. 

“There’s been little to zero action at a regional level to address the sea otter issue, and there’s not very many avenues to work within and get some sort of relief,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said at the meeting. “The salmon fishermen get relief all the time, so why not the shell fishermen?”

Sea otters are voracious eaters that must consume up to 30% of their body weight — that’s around 25 pounds of food for a large male — daily to survive. Their diet consists primarily of marine invertebrates including clams, oysters, sea cucumbers and crabs, including Dungeness.

As the otters’ numbers have rebounded from near extinction in the 1900s, they’ve needed more and more food to support their population. In recent years, this has put them directly at odds with Alaska commercial crab fishermen.

This isn’t the first municipal resolution that has been aimed at addressing the issue. In 2025, Wrangell, Haines and Petersburg passed resolutions seeking a sea otter management plan and for the federal government to relax sea otter protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. 

In an interview following the August vote, Villarma said the chances of seeing any amendments to marine mammal protections are pretty low at this time.

The assembly cannot outright declare a disaster, but rather, it is “requesting that the governor of the state of Alaska support and request a federal fishery resource disaster determination.”

According to the assembly meeting materials, if the U.S. government approves a disaster declaration, it could bring financial compensation for the 60 Dungeness crab permit holders residing in Wrangell.

But Villarma said he understands federal support could be difficult to secure.

“What we’ve seen under this administration is a low chance or probability for fishery disasters to be subsidized,” he said.

Potential compensation is only one of the goals of the declaration. The others include bringing more awareness to the issues that fishermen face, and also to pave the way for the formation of a shellfish association in Southeast to give fishermen more agency in resource management.

There is currently no shellfish-specific commercial fishing association in Southeast like there are for seiners, fish processors and gillnetters.

The benefit of creating one is to have an organized group that can work directly with government agencies to address concerns and apply pressure on the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association to fulfill mandated stock assessments and population surveys, according to Villarma.

To help facilitate the formation of such an association, Villarma said the borough will bring in an expert to work with fishermen over the next few months.

It will be up to participating groups to decide what the makeup of that association will be, but Villarma said he imagines it could include stakeholders from subsistence users to tribes and tribal corporation members or even municipalities.

“Whatever the form,” Villarma said, “I would imagine that it’s going to be a broad array of different user types, but the fishermen being probably the strongest sub-user in the association.” 

• This story originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.