Alaska Region Crab Permits

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) established the Crab Rationalization (CR) Program as a catch share program for nine crab fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI), and assigned quota share (QS) to persons and processor quota share (PQS) to processors based on their historic participation in one or more of these nine crab fisheries during a specific period. The CR Program components include QS allocation, PQS allocation, individual fishing quota (IFQ) issuance, and individual processing quota (IPQ) issuance, quota transfers, use caps, crab harvesting cooperatives, protections for Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries, arbitration system, monitoring, economic data collection, and cost recovery fee collection. NMFS issues a proposed rule (RIN 0648-BE98)to implement Amendment 44 to the Fishery Management Plan for Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands King and Tanner Crabs and a regulatory amendment that would modify regulations governing the CR Program. With this action, a ROFR may continue with the current ROFR holder or a new ROFR holder when PQS is transferred and requires PQS holders to make specific certifications regarding ROFR contracts when annually applying for IPQ and when transferring PQS that are subject to a ROFR. In addition, the crab harvesting cooperatives must list the name of each member of the cooperative in its application for IFQ rather than provide NMFS with copies of each member’s IFQ application. These actions are necessary to improve available information concerning transfer and use of PQS and IPQ subject to a ROFR, thereby enhancing the ability of eligible crab communities to retain their historical processing interests in the BSAI crab fisheries, and to improve the administration of the CR Program.

The latest form for Alaska Region Crab Permits expires 2021-01-31 and can be found here.

Annual application for crab IFQ permit

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Natural Resources - Conservation, Marine and Land Management

Review document collections for all forms, instructions, and supporting documents - including paper/printable forms.