When Alaska's Snow Crab Went Missing

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It's February and I'm at a beach on the island of Kodiak in the southwestern part of Alaska. The island is only accessible by small plane or boats. It's the afternoon and thirty degrees fahrenheit Chile, but tolerable because the sun is out and I feel the warmth of the sunlight on me. The sand is black and behind me are dark green spruce trees. There's some light snow sprinkled by the shore. Standing next to me is Pedro Gruz.

Island in who stands but campar.

He enjoys spending time here with his wife and sons. They camp here during the summer when school is out, and they fish for salmon at a nearby Riverplente.

Campo. Yes, the.

Fedro loves being in nature to feel connected to it. He didn't grow up in a big city, but he and his family might have to leave Kodiak because the industry that has long sustained and rooted them here on the island is now uncertain. Late last year, the snow crab fishing season in the Bearing Sea, which is about several hundred miles from here, was canceled, and the snow crab cancelation has never happened before. Catching snow crab is a main source of income for Pedro and others in

Changemente Favrero Primo and Baked the baked eca Aki in Casa.

Federo says it's the first time in more than two decades of his fishing career that he's here on land in February. It's a weird, bittersweet feeling because he's able to spend time with his family, but it makes them uneasy. As we stand here, the waves crash onto shore and we stare out into the endless blue water. We both quietly ask ourselves will the snowcrab come back? And if they don't, how will the fishermen and the communities that rely on them survive?

From Futuromedia and PRX, It's Latino USA. I'm Maria in Josa. Today we visit Kodiak, Alaska. We see how a fishing community is trying to stay afloat as climate change disrupts their industry. On this episode, Latino USA producer Renaldo Leanos Junior has the story for you.

Alaska has often been called a ground zero of the climate crisis. That's because the people living here are already experiencing profound changes in their way of life.

Well, the impact of climate change is already very real for villages on an island in northern Alaska. They're being forced out of their homes because of rising sea levels.

Anchorage, Alaska hit a record ninety degrees on the holiday.

Glaciers in the state melting at record rates, and climate scientists say this.

Is bad news for all of us, not just Alaska.

Alaska is the biggest seafood producer in the country, and fishing is a pillar for communities. In twenty nineteen, more than sixty thousand people worked in Alaska's seafood industry, and more than thirty one thousand fishermen were employeed through commercial fishing.

Major blow to America's seafood industry.

Alaska's Department of Fish and Game has canceled the winter snow crab season and the Bearing Sea due to falling numbers.

It's estimated that about ten billion snow crab vanished in the Bearing Sea, the cause, scientists say warming waters. In twenty twenty one, the snow crab from the Bearing Sea was an industry with an estimated worth of two hundred million dollars. Scientists have kept an eye on the snow crab for years. In twenty eighteen, they saw many young crab, a sign the population was healthy. Then in twenty twenty

Just take your small tail.

Okay.

That's Chad Lowenberg. He's the Arctic Lady's captain. He's Fedro's boss. Running the Arctic Lady is a family business. The boat has been around for more than forty years. I'm here today because Chad wants me to see firsthand how the collapse of the snow crab season is directly impacting his life and the men he employs. Chad says when he first heard the news, it was like someone knocked the

Red. Oh, I look it up.

I slowly start to inch my way down step by step. Chad shouts at me from above and says, I'll see a rope when I reached the last step. The rope will help stabilize me so that I don't fall when I move from the ladder to the boat one leg at a time, a more step, Chad can see that I'm struggling feedro His crewmate steps in to help me from the boat. Okay, Feather, who's forty eight, has been working on the boat for twenty three years. He tells me not to be afraid. He tells me to extend

Bed Ro, do you have a board you can put across here a board.

Yeah, Featheral brings a makeshift plank and I slowly walk across it.

Heads.

Oh, say say I made it on board. And when I look around there's so much going on. A few men are walking up and down the boat and will look like orange rubber wet suits to protect themselves from the water. A machine like a crane is moving a massive steel bucket from the boat's deck onto the dock. Above us, there are hundreds of tanner crab, not snow crab, which tend to be a little smaller. Inside of the bucket. These tanner crab are each about a foot wide, and

Parola Presta.

Pedro says, tenderine is when a boat transports a smaller boat's catch to shore. In this case, because the Arctic Lady is so big, it is able to fill up with tanner crab and get it to the prossessing plans on shore. Tonight, Pedro and the men are transferring two hundred and fifty thousand pounds of tanner crab from large tanks in the boat to a massive steel bucket. Then

Okay Okaki bucket.

Look, there's so much tanner crab on the boat that it'll take Betherro and the men several day and night shifts to finish unloading. Bethro arrived in Kodiak in the early nineties, and he wasn't the only one. Two of his uncles got here before him. They're the ones who told Pedro about work at the local fish processing plant here, and that seems to be common. Workers arrived by word of mouth, some arriving in the late seventies and early eighties.

As breaking.

Rita.

Pedro says he and the men are now on break because a cannery needs time to finish processing the crab that's already there. After that they can start receiving more. And as Pedro talks to me, I see a large hose next to him spewing a steady stream of water down to the crab below in the tanks. During this waiting period, they need to keep the crabs hydrated. If not, they'll die, and if they die, that would mean less money for them. At Pedro says this, I can tell

Baramos as Sonamoss Cocincras this wife.

Lisa.

They usually start at around seven a m. And end their day at midnight. They have dinner, then they sleep five hours and do it all over again today with Bethro on the deck. There are just a few men working. Two of them are Latino and the other is Filipino. The rest of its crew is made up of workers from the local fish processing plant. Pedro says he and the men expect to work another long night because they still have two more.

Tanks to go, So whya pa la caza.

He hopes the current shift can finish one of these tanks by six p m. So that the night shift can get started on the last one.

Lo lajenda almost single's ideas.

No, he never imagined he'd have to tender or catch any other species of crab or fish during snow crap season. That was always a full time, permanent job. It's something he thinks about a lot, but he's grateful for the work because otherwise he'd be sitting at home. Pedro has three kids, the youngest thirteen and the oldest twenty six. He also has a wife who works part time taking care of children, and his mother in law lives with them too. They need his income to make ends meet.

Coming up on Latino USA, we learn about the science of what happened to the snow crab, and hear about the lives both Pedro and Chad have created for themselves and what it would mean if the snow crab were never to return. Stay with uses.

Ola, I've thought.

A lifelong educator and the proud recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Today, it's my great honor to wish Latino USA a very happy thirtieth anniversary. Wuchisi Matgraskiez for thirty years of informing, challenging and inspiring us. That you see that is to all at Latino US.

Say hey, we're back. Before the break, we met Pedro Gruz and Chad Loewenberg. They've been looking for side gigs, temporary work to help them get by after the cancelation of the snow crab season. Pedro and Chad have created lives in Kodiak and this cancelation is having a direct economic hit on both of them. But before we get to that, we're going to learn about what scientists believe happened to the snow crab. Right, let's get back to

And right now, as I'm walking on the sidewalk, there's, you know, reminents of just a little bit of snow here. It's early in the morning and I just left my hotel room. I'm making my way to a NOAH facility on the island. NOAH stands for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administry. It's a federal agency focused on understanding and predicting changes to the Earth's climate, weather, and oceans. It's pretty cold out today. I have my thick jacket on,

My name is Mike Litzo. I'm the lab director for the Kodiak Lab for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Mike is not originally from Alaska. He grew up in Ohio and he was born in Australia.

Classic story where my wife got a job out in Kodiak working for Noah Fisheries, and I followed her. So.

Mike is considered a crab expert. He's been studying snow crab for almost twenty years and he's the director of the Kodiak laboratory here. Okay, so we're entering another room now. He takes me downstairs to a saltwater research lab to show me some of the work they're doing. He shows me some crabs swimming in large tanks. They're actually snow crab, and it's the first time I see one alive while here in Kodiak.

So this is the actual wet lab.

So we're seeing sort of acres of large seawater tanks going off into the distance where where we maintain our crab. So we're able to experimentally mimic the conditions either that exist now or that we expect will exist in the future, and then look at the response of these different animals.

Mix is the reason they're doing this is to see if the snow crab have the potential to adapt to warmer waters. Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels like coal and oil cause seawaters to get warmer. Snow crab are not just found in the Bearing Sea, but also in waters near Japan and Greenland, and scientists are also

I mean, we can try there's no sound that comes off of a crowd, you know, we can pick one out. I don't know, what is that worth doing?

Yeah, let's do that, and then you can't like splashing sounds of them. Yeah.

Mike says he was part of a team that went to Dutch Harbor, also in Alaska, in twenty twenty two to conduct a survey of the snow crap population that's southwest of Kodiak, and the work is a collaboration between his office and the State of Alaska. That's when they notice a significant drop in the snow crap population.

What we do is we charted two commercial fishing boats, and we put six scientists onto each of those boats and go out and do four hundred and fifty odd toes all the way across the Eastern Barren Sea on a grid patterns.

A toe is when they cast a net and try to see what comes up in that net.

So we've got these stations that we've been going back to you every year since the mid nineteen seventies, and we go out, we toe for half an hour, bring up the net, and then count and measure every fish, every crab that comes up.

Mike says that back in twenty eighteen, the situation looked promising. They were seeing young snow crab that were almost big enough to be caught. But then things began to change. In twenty nineteen, scientists toed in about half the number of crabs, and they didn't do a survey in twenty twenty because of COVID. Then in twenty twenty one and again in twenty twenty two, their nets picked up very little.

You know, snow crab are an Arctic animal. They only live in areas that are covered by ice in the winter. They only are found in abundance in this very cold bottom temperatures, and that ice in those cold bottom temperatures, which is absent in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen.

Particular the Arctic region is warming at four times faster than the global average. At first, scientists thought one possibility was that the snow crab had gone off to colder waters, but then they didn't find any of those snow crab in those colder regions. Mike says another possibility it may have been that these warmer waters brought in predatory fish that ate the crab. He also believes it could have been that.

Warm temperatures made diseases more prevalent. It might be that warm temperatures raised the metabolic rates to the crab to the point where they couldn't feed themselves and starved.

But whatever the specific reason, scientists now say that they believed that there was in fact a mass die off of the snow crab in the Bearing Sea, and the specificity behind that mass die off is still a little unclear, but it's tied to warming waters. Now, scientists estimate that the snow crab season won't come back for another three to five years, that is, until the young snowcrab mature in large amounts and are ready to be caught again.

Yea yea Quia Kodia consa.

Sen Jesenja also fled during Es sal Valdor's civil war in the nineteen eighties. Pedro says he vividly remembers that time.

I said, yo ya mirado amigostos delo combatis.

Several of his friends went to fight, and many of them did not return.

Alivedomos ala militarento a rapido those press and mannamento.

Alaa and says.

The Pedro's dad said he did not want him to serve in the military because men were being sent out to fight without proper training. So Pedro decided to leave Es Salvador and moved to California to join two of his uncles there. Then those uncles moved to Kodiak after hearing about work in a fish processing plants. Betro followed

Young California Nava elmes Ii Para the sa Mana Grand.

Chick was me.

Pescalome Gustava Yo and the de la la man A.

Solo.

In California she would make about two hundred dollars a month, but in Kodiak she would get a paycheck for six hundred dollars every two weeks, triple the amount.

Yes.

Senya says she liked putting in long hours, as many as eighteen per day. When Pedro first got to Kodiak, he also worked at a fish processing plant and as they would have it. Pedro Senja eventually crossed paths bv Mo and Frentel de p.

He and Frentia Villa and Parque the Huar football soccer. Yes, the yelokoinop was Megul meg Megusta.

Then, hey, they didn't know they lived across the street from each other. Yes, Pedro at a nearby park playing soccer one day, She says, she liked what she saw. She want him over, she says, and then the rest is history. As I'm listening to their story as to how they arrived in Kodiak, I can't help but to think how Pedro and Yesenya were both essentially displaced by the civil war in Salvador, and how now climate change might also force them and their sons to leave their

And Albarco g.

Medic Are you not challenge, Sayhira Scarmegoo sing and glass Ellen Glazara and glass Bueno is the Miavente.

Pedro was nervous about saying yes to the job because his English wasn't that good, but he took the risk than.

Yallos prendido bajo prendido mahing glasante.

Now he's been fishing on the Arctic Lady for about twenty three years. He says he loves it, but being out at sea isn't always easy because the weather can be unpredictable. The sunsets can be beautiful.

Though, ideas Togara to telefono its almost photos in not start as danger mos okay gundel se wo, Yeah, there's a parado.

Rojo.

I was just la Maresta being Tranquila, being Tranquila motoessa.

Pedro says there are days when he's on the boat hundreds of miles from shore and the sea is unbelievably still, and it feels like he's at home on land. But that stillness can change in an instant, though, and the cold is unlike anything he's ever felt before.

Guando id s k frisa los yellow in pierrel barco semi you know, okay jel song.

When the temperatures drop, ice forms over the entire boat. Bether on the crew spend up to three hours breaking that I he says, the cold hurts so much he feels it in his heart. As we're talking, detro sons listen closely. They've probably heard a lot of these stories growing up. They know how tough it is out at sea.

As an upcoming new generation fisherman, it's pretty hard, you know, trying to get into this industry. You know, it's pretty rough out here, especially when you have no experience.

I mean, your dad has sent me like videos before, you know, of him, like being out at sea, and I've seen like the huge waves like crashing onto the boat and even just spending the last few days with him, it looks like long hours, you know. So what made you want to go into you know, into fishing. My dad's big role model, I mean, the man he is, that's how I want to be one.

I'm his age.

I asked Pethero what he thinks about what his son has just said, you know this, Pedro says he is grateful and proud, but he's insistent that he wishes his son would not go down the same path. But Moises is adamanant.

My dad has talked to me about, you know, really thinking about this, and uh, you know, I simply was just like born and raised, you know, being with my dad every time my dad was here. You know, I always wanted to go with my dad to the boat all the time, just him and his boys at the crew.

I feel like this has been an ongoing contentious issue for Bethero and his son. Yet I also get a sense that Moises realizes how the industry will probably never be the same due to climate change. He even says he remembers being a little kid and seeing several feet of snow when he opened the door, but now there isn't as much. Jobs are also uncertain, and that might keep young people like him away from fishing.

He says, Yeah, I'm pretty worried about it. You know, I did read an article a while ago saying, like the average fisherman is over fifty years old and at disdirection it's going to be harder for younger guys. Gen z fishermen get in disindustry and then really just see a future. And I mean, if it continues like this, I highly doubt there's going to be new generation fishermen.

How does that make you feel you have aspirations to want to possibly follow in your dad's footsteps.

Yeah, I mean it kind of. Yeah, it does bump me out. I mean, man, I do see people my age still going out, still going strong. Hopefully this is just the down moment. In a year or two, it can get back to normal and it's gonna be worth it.

Moistas's optimism is something I heard from many others in Kodiak. It's a hope that things will swing back in their direction because being out at sea is in their DNA and it often spans generations. But many scientists predict that the reality is that climate change is only expected to get worse. Still, Chad Lowenberg, Bethro's boss and the Arctic Lady's captain, holds onto this optimism. The future of this industry is part of his family's legacy.

So this is our lounge, This is where we hang out, We watch TV, relax its kind of like the guys hang out.

They lay down on the couch and whatever watch TV.

Chad shows me around the Arctic Lady, and I can tell the sense of pride that he has for the boat. Every inch of it has a story. It's been out to sea for forty years, starting with his dad. Being on the boat brings up a lot of feelings and memories for Chad. Catching snow crab on the Arctic Lady. It's a family business.

So when my dad was twenty one in nineteen seventy nine, he.

Went out on a limb, got alone, and he had this boat built at twenty one years old and brought it up to Kodiak here to fish crab and that was its main purpose.

It was to come up here and be a crab fishing boat. He was successful with it. He did a great job.

Chad, who is now forty five, was born in Kodiak. Today, Chad is wearing a black baseball cap and a black longsleeved shirt. When he talks. I sense the nostalgia that he has for his childhood growing up. Most of his memories are of his dad and fishing.

I can remember when I was a young kid five six seven years old.

My dad would come in with this boat and delivering kodiak, and my mom would bring us down to the boat, and my brother and I we would run around the boat, raid the candy cupboard and well dad was delivering.

Even though they were apart a lot. The moments Chat and his dad spent together on the boat inspired Chad to get into the fishing industry, just as Moissetts wants to do because of his dad, Bedrol.

When I grew up a little bit and I was ten eleven twelve, then we were allowed to go out and go on the boat, and Dad would pull me out of school and we.

Enjoyed being around his crew.

The guys, you know, they'd play tricks on us and now they'd tape us to the rail, or they'd tie us to the crane and dip us in the water.

Chat's father retired from fishing early at thirty four. He had other people manage the Arctic Lady until Chad and his brother could take over. Chad takes me up two flights of stairs on the boat.

So we're in the wheelhouse. This is where I drive the boat.

From the wheelhouse, you can see the deck of the ship right below. The crew is hard at work trying to finish offloading the tanner crab. It's now day three. It's an exhausting job, and Chad can't help but to think that it's still a huge pay cut for them all from what they're normally used to making. He says about half of his annual income comes from catching snow crab.

It's like making pennies versus making one hundred dollars bill.

Besides this recent temporary tendering gig, Chad and his crew also finished another job. They tried fishing for cod, but they quickly ran into a problem at sea.

This cod season was very very short, and the reason was is because there's no crab, So what does everybody do. Everybody's doing cod now, whereas before not everybody would do it because they would concentrate on catching their crab.

Chad says, even if they had caught some cod, there's a huge price difference between that and the snow crab they usually fish.

For cod.

We get forty six cents a pound is what we were paid, so quite a bit less. We're talking three fifty pounds for crab, and we're talking forty six cents for cod. So if you can put that into perspective.

Chad also makes it a point to say it's not always easy to fish for something different. He was able to and it was still quite expensive, but most might not have that luxury. If you're used to fishing for crab and then try to fish for cod or salmon, Chad says it usually requires buying special gear for that specific species, things like specialized traps, and it also costs money. Also, eats fishery has different regulations and seasons.

You got to take money out of your pocket and try to get your gear ready for another fishery when you didn't have the income from the other to do it.

So, if you know what I mean, it's tough.

And he stresses that there are ripple effects, I mean it's huge.

It goes all the way down to Oh, it's just like the food chain.

It's uh, you know, crab boats aren't bringing crab in, uh delivering the city's not making the.

Tax off of them.

Several small towns in Alaska rely on this extra cash, and when that money isn't flowing into the city, budgets have to be slashed in order to accommodate the deficit. Take for example, the small community of Saint Paul, a town with a majority of Indigenous residents. It's west of Kodiak, about seven hundred miles away, and it's not the first time Saint Paul has experienced loss. In twenty twenty one,

The crew don't have money in their pockets to go to the restaurants there were not spending money on maintenance.

At the hardware store is huge. It takes a dramatic toll on the commune unity.

People aren't, you know, pulling their boats out of the water and doing work unless they absolutely have to. So the shipyards are feeling it. It's huge. It's all across the board, it's everywhere.

Coming up on Latino USA, we learn about the impact climate change is having beyond the snow crab and later chat and't bether away in on their futures in Kodiak. Stay with us, not stay by. Yes, hey, we're back. When we left off, we learned about the financial struggles some fishermen in Kodiak, Alaska are facing. That's due to the snow crab season being canceled. Earlier, we also met Mike Litso, a scientist looking at how snow crab, the fishing industry, and those working in it can survive in

Of the story. So this is where I mean, like you said, a lot of the experiments are going to be taking place and stuff.

Yeah, we've got an experiment running back.

At Mike Litzo's office. He says that the snow crab aren't the only species to recently have had their fishing seasons canceled. Mike also points out that the number of red king crab have declined in recent years, so.

Snow crab is a sudden collapse. King crab, the population has been stable, but the problem there is that they're not producing young For some reason. Young crab are not appearing in the population to replace older crab. So without those young coming in, the population's gradually been declining over the last decade or so.

But what are some of the hypothesis behind that, is it related to climate as well or is it more complex. So in terms of the causes of.

The red king crab decline and why they're not producing young crab, we have a lot less data, So without data, it's hard to make any sort of firm, hard conclusion about what's going on. One hypothesis that's definitely on our radar is acidification.

That acidification is primarily coming from the carbon dioxide released in the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. The oceans absorb that carbon dioxide, lowering the pH levels of the water, and as a result, it's harder for marine animals to adapt. Mike says juvenile red king crabs are especially sensitive to acidification. All of these observations, when put together, paint a troubling picture.

You know, we've known that the Barren Sea's going to warm for decades, and I've been involved in the Alaska marine science community for that time, and we've gotten a really clear story from the oceanographers over that time that the Northern Barren Sea would always keep its winter sea ice cover just because there's no sunlight in the winter up there and it gets so cold.

But things suddenly shifted twenty eighteen, twenty.

Nineteen, we lost it. You know, we saw the Barren Sea largely ice free and mark you know, all the way up to Bearing Straight and so that was something that not only had we never seen before, but we the best science suggested that we would never expect to see so soon.

This really struck a chord with me, and it made me wonder and ask, Mike, is what's happening to the snow crab and red king crab in the Bearing Sea? A sign of what's to come in other regions?

I mean, we are starting to see a lot of volatility in some fisheries in Alaska PACIFICA in the Gulf of Alaska collapsed in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, we saw a failure in the pink salmon run in the Gulf of Alaska in twenty sixteen. Salmon in the Yukon cosca Quin rivers that supported a lot of Native communities in western Alaska have experienced this persistent failure that's been super, super disruptive and produced a lot of hardship for those communities.

All of this, Mike says, the overall fishery system in Alaska remains healthy and robust. That means some of these fisheries have started recovering and others remain at normal population numbers, but this stability may not be permanent. The alarming trend is that these drops in numbers are happening more broadly and also more often.

Looking forward, we know that even if we halted all carbon emissions today, we've still got a lot of warming baked into the system. Carbon dioxide's a long lived, well mixed gas, and we should expect to see the barriancy warming up beyond what we've seen so far.

Mike's as the recent snow crap collapse should make us all think about climate change differently.

These changes are coming in exactly when is impossible to predict. They're going to continue to be surprising in a sense, and so it's really is time for us to start thinking about how communities, communities involved with actual resources in particular, are going to adapt to the changes as they come.

And are you hopeful? How do you feel? You know?

I think the magnitude of the challenges that we face are something we have to really look at clearly, and there are some big challenges coming. I like to remain optimistic for my kids, you know, And I tell them that the world's going to need some solutions and it's going to be up to them in their generation, and that there will be solutions and so so I guess that's how I land on that I like to be optimistic on their behalf.

I walked out of the Noah facility feeling overwhelmed because the issue of climate change is so complex. I wanted to feel like optimism, but I just couldn't in that moment. Chad and many other fishermen in Kodiak get guidance from the Alaska Bearing Sea Crabbers, a nonprofit group. They have told their members the importance of diversifying their source of income. The group acknowledges that the climate crisis is here and

This report tells us that our collective failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions leaves us on track to exceed one point five degree cells use of global warming, and that continuing to march down this track will bring further intensification of extreme weather, of ecosystem degradation, and of damage to lives and livelihoods, so we must turn down the heat.

Experts met to discuss these findings. They said that humanity is on thin ice. One environmentalist Inger Anderson that she believes the world has the technology and then know how to get the job done. The key is restoration and sustainability.

Renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, energy efficiency, green transport, green urban infrastructure, halting deforestation, ecosystem restoration, sustainable food systems including reduced food loss and waste. Investing in these areas and more besides will help to stabilize our climate, but.

It might not be easy to get governments or industry leaders on board to make these chain or to look at sustainability right away. The report also says that climate change has impacted humans, animals, and all of our environments across the world, with those who have generally least contributed to climate change being the most vulnerable and disproportionately affected. The men on the Arctic Lady are finishing up transferring

I'm going to keep doing everything I can to keep the boat busy, the guy's busy, and move forward.

I'm going to keep looking for jobs to do, and that's all I can do until it rebounds.

Chad knows that he isn't the only one in this situation, and he knows that the snow crab fishing season probably won't be back up and running as it used to.

Well, I thank god that I saved for a rainy day, and.

I was fortunate enough to be taught by my dad to, you know, save your money because you never know when the rainy day is gonna come. And it's here, and we did save and we're fortunate to be one of the boats that may be able to weather the storm.

It's not going to be easy. We're not going to be living the high life. Definitely gonna have some cuts coming here and a new way of life. But I hope in three to five years, we're back at it.

And the reality though, is right that some boats that probably will not make it right through these next couple of years.

I'm gonna say two thirds of the fleet will not make it. You just can't do it. You can't have an operation like this and not do anything and park it at the docks.

It's not gonna work. So there's gonna be a lot of guys that don't make it. You know, the community is going to be hurt. People are going to have to find other things to do. I don't know, you know what else to say, other than it's going to affect it. It's gonna be tough times.

Fethero's and Chad's lives are at a crossroads as they continue to live with the effects of climate change. They also each represent two perspectives of this crisis. Chad, as captain of the Arctic Lady, has found ways to keep his business running, while Fed is someone who works on that boat, a fisherman. And it seems like right now there are two visible paths. The first, stay in an industry that you've been in for generations and remain hopeful, or the second make a shift and try to get

This is temp.

Back on Bethero's favorite beach, an hour away from the city. Bethero says he and his family have talked about making the move away from Alaska, maybe to California. He's considering looking for a job in construction or as a truck driver. Six months after my visit to Kodiak, Bethero tells me he's still out fishing and doing temporary jobs. It's August and it's salmon fishing season, but as expected, he and the other fishermen are not making as much money, and

This episode was produced by Renaldo Lanos Junior and edited by Daisy Gontredras. It was mixed by Julio Caruso and jj Carubin.

Fact checking for.

This episode by Elizabeth Lenthal Torres. Special thanks to Kirsten doe Brath, former news director of kmx T, the local public radio station in Kodiak, Alaska. The Latino USA team include Andre Loo Pees Crusdo, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Victoria Strada, and we had help from Dorim Marquez and Raoul Perez in Josa. Our Director of Anger Pioneering is Stephanie Lepaux. Additional engineering support by Gabriel Le Bias. Our marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed by Senor R.

Reinos.

I'm your host and executive producer Marienno Josa. Join us again next time and in the meantime, look for us on social media. I'll see you there and remember.

Not by es Chao.

Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, The Heising Simons Foundation Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities more at hsfoundation dot org, and funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of health is made possible, in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.