Nine miles off Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Skipper Gene Cameron and his two crewmen maneuvered the 40-ft. Kathy C. along a string of buoys and hauled crab pots, one at a time, from the bottom, 100 ft.

For two years in a row, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the snow crab season in the Bering Sea after biologists discovered an estimated 10 billion crabs had mysteriously disappeared — ...