Something’s off.A report says trawl surveys in the eastern Bering Sea found an unusual surge of snow crab–Tanner crab hybrids in 2025. These hybrids had historically been rare, but were reported to be 13.4 times more abundant than the historical average and to make up nearly half of commercially sized male snow crabs available to catch.
The oddity is that the increase followed a collapse in the snow crab population after the 2018–2019 marine heatwave. Computer modeling described in the report points to reduced sea ice and the snow crab collapse, with less competition and predation, as a likely route for hybrids to become more abundant. Whether the hybrids can reproduce or what their longer-term ecological effects will be remains unclear.
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