News

On October 19, 2022, we invited various stakeholders to a workshop on king crab management at the Fram Center in Tromsø. The participants represented commercial interests, authorities at different levels, and NGOs. The workshop aimed to gain a better understanding of the current challenges and dilemmas related to king crab management and explore how this information can be included in the models developed by PICO researchers. The researchers will analyse the results from the workshop and identify voices and perspectives that are important to consider. The results will be shared with the workshop participants and will be openly available here. We will continue the dialogue with the stakeholders throughout the project to get feedback on our ideas and models and explore how different value views can be integrated into an ongoing dialogue about governance as new knowledge is gained and value views change. A new workshop will be held in Finnmark, the new king crab kingdom, during the fall of 2023 to share results from the project and discuss which perspectives and tools can contribute to the search for the optimal management of the crab.

In the evening, the PICO project and EISA project gathered about 50 experts, stakeholders and Tromsø community members to share a dining experience focusing on snow and king crab knowledge and cuisine. The evening included crab-themed food courses interspersed with short presentations giving the latest research on the crabs in the Barents Sea, their ecology and impacts, management dilemmas, and opportunities these valuable but non-native species represent. Falk-Andersson introduced the series of talks with her red king crab poem. Brooks Kaiser further dived into the history and peculiarities of the red king crab invasion, while Paul Berg shared preliminary findings on the snow crab genetics. During the first course, we learned about the food chain of the snow crab, modelled by Helena Michelsen. Then, we got to know Claire Armstrong’s perspective on whether the Norwegian management of the red king crab can be considered schizophrenic or bio-economic optimal – all while enjoying nicely tasting crabs. After a delicious main course, we got a lovely dessert, and Santiago de la Puente presented the markets of the snow crab. We thank everyone who joined us for a lovely evening with many interesting conversations and talks.

We, humans live in groups, which helps us discover facts, as illustrated in an interactive experiment at an outreach at Framsenteret in Tromsø during the research days (Forskningsdagene), October 1^st, 2022. We filled an aquarium with a lot of brightly coloured balls, and visitors were asked to estimate how many there were.

Some of the guesses were too high, and others were too low. In fact, they were all over the place! But as more and more people joined in, the average of all their guesses got closer to the actual number of balls:

In the graph to the left, we show all the individual guesses (black dots), the number of balls in the aquarium (the red line) and the group's guess, which is the average of all the guesses up to that point (blue line). We see that the blue line gets closer and closer to the red line as more and more people add their guesses. In the animation to the right, we show how this plays out in real-time. That is, how the group's guess changes as more people add their guess to it.

In the PICO project, we asked fisheries experts and ordinary laypeople to estimate how far down the Norwegian coast the King Crab has come after being released in Russian waters 50 or so years ago. Here too, combining different people's estimates might help us get closer to the truth.

Although 2021 started with home office and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can look back at a year filled with exciting activities, discussions and work in the PICO project. 

In September, Jannike Falk-Andersson took over as project manager, and the University of Cape Coast joined the consortium when Godwin Kofi Vondolia moved to Ghana earlier this year. A new consortium agreement was made to reflect these changes. 

In October, we arranged two hybrid meetings in Tromsø. Together with the EISA project, an expert meeting with scientist knowledgeable about king and snow crab was arranged. The experts from Akvaplan-Niva, NIVA and the Institute of Marine Research had valuable inputs to the risk assessment survey (WP2) and stated preference study (WP3) which resulted in stimulating discussions. Following the expert meeting, PICO had the annual project meeting, where we reflected on the input from the experts and discussed the way forward in each work package.

Later in October and November, WP3 conducted focus groups in Fredrikstad, Alta and Vardø, as well as interviews in Tromsø to get feedback on the stakeholder survey from the general public. The focus groups gave us a lot of energy as the participants were very engaged and had a lot of useful input and reflections to our work. The survey is now ready for implementation and will be sent out to a group of respondents before Christmas for testing.

In December, the UArctic-IASC-PICO Global Ecological and Economic Connections in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Crab Fisheries Workshop was held online with crab researchers and stakeholders from around the globe. Topics that were discussed included the impact of market segmentation and diversification on coastal communities, and understanding interdisciplinary drivers of change, such as climate, fishing and other environmental factors. The participants contributed with their perspectives both during the workshop and before through short videos (Global Connections Crabs - YouTube). 

By the end of the year, WP1 and WP4 have jointly discussed some exciting ideas for the participatory modelling to take place in PICO. This work will continue next year where we will explore new ways of getting input from stakeholders in research. 

We wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and look forward to continuing the work in PICO together with stakeholders and the scientific community in 2022.