The Southwest Section of the Kodiak District closed to Tanner crab fishing at 6 p.m. Friday.

In the South Peninsula District, the waters of Cold Bay inside of a line from Bold Cape to Thin Point also closed to Tanner crab fishing 6 p.m. Thursday.

The Southwest had one of the smaller quotas, 150,000 pounds. The Eastside Section has the largest quota at 1,300,000 pounds.

Nick Sagalkin, fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the season is progressing well.

“Harvest in the Eastside Section has been very strong. That’s where the bulk of the fleet is. It looks very good,” Sagalkin said.

About 750,000 pounds of the Eastside quota has already been harvested as of Jan. 21.

“It’s going pretty rapidly. It’s a very strong harvest and there are quite a few boats there, too,” Sagalkin said.

He said the Eastside Section would probably close this week.

Due to 100 percent participation of catch reporting from vessels in the Southwest Section, the delivery requirement for this closure will be waived.

Sagalkin explained the catch reporting program is voluntary, but it makes his job easier and benefits the fishermen.

“We don’t require vessels to do that. Everyone who participated in the Southwest Section called in, so I had a very good handle on the catch coming out of that section. I waived our normal requirement of making them deliver their catch,” he said.

Normally, when ADF&G closes a section, it requires fishing vessels to come in and offload to calculate the harvest. However, fishermen would rather not have to come back and deliver when they could go on to another area, Sagalkin said, citing high fuel costs.

Because all of the fishermen in the Southwest Section called in nightly to report their catch, ADF&G officials felt comfortable allowing them to continue to another area rather than mandating them to deliver.

He compared that to the Northeast Section where 20 boats participated in the Tanner fishery, but only two vessels called in.

“My confidence in that catch is very uncertain. I don’t really know what’s going on,” Sagalkin said. “I’m estimating, but my estimates are unreliable. So when I close that section, I will likely enforce the delivery requirement.”

He speculated that some fishermen don’t call in because it’s too much trouble for them and they may not have sufficient communication equipment.

He encourages the vessels to call in their reports.

Alaska Fresh Seafoods co-owner Dave Woodruff said they brought in their first Tanner crab Thursday morning.

“They look excellent,” Woodruff said, describing them as having a “nice clean shell full of meat.”

“Because we’ve been out of the Bairdi Tanner crab business for so long, nobody wants to pay you more than they do for (opilio) crab,” he said.

“We’re having to fight the battle of working our way back into the marketplace. It’s been gone for years in Kodiak because of the lack of crab,” Woodruff said.

A decline in Tanner crab through the 1980s led to the fishery’s closure in 1995. It reopened in 2001.

Mirror writer Deanna Cooper may be reached via e-mail at dcooper@kodiakdailymirror.com.