Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death.
I think it’s more impactful if you write the numbers out fully, 6,000,000,000 down to 200,000. That’s 0.00003% of the population remaining
Edit: Statistically, you could say something is 100% certain if there are 6 standard deviations, or 99.9999998%. This is more than 5 standard deviations; more than 99.99994% of the population has been eradicated. I think it’s all but certain that snow crabs will end up on the endangered species list.
Kudos for the mathematical perspective. It seems wild to me that these crabs aren’t instantly considered critically endangered. Perhaps more evidence is required to confirm the data.
Of course I didn’t read the article, but harvesting doesn’t help. I live about as far inland as you can get (not Russia, tho) and there are always “fresh” snow crab legs at the local grocery store.
You should probably take it with a pinch of salt, it’s been forever since I’ve actually done statistics :o) I just remember the 6 sigma certainty thing when I used to study Biochemistry, I may well have applied it wrong here hah.
Harvesting won’t help from now on, with such a small population, but it likely wasn’t a factor in reducing the population from 6 billion.
One type of snow crab has adults reaching 1-4 lbs, or 0.45 to 1.81 kg, so the round numbers would perhaps be either 2 lbs or 1 kg. Sticking with metric for laziness that’s 5,999,800 tonnes of crab. It’s roughly about the same for imperial tons also.
I think it’s more impactful if you write the numbers out fully, 6,000,000,000 down to 200,000. That’s 0.00003% of the population remaining
Edit: Statistically, you could say something is 100% certain if there are 6 standard deviations, or 99.9999998%. This is more than 5 standard deviations; more than 99.99994% of the population has been eradicated. I think it’s all but certain that snow crabs will end up on the endangered species list.
Kudos for the mathematical perspective. It seems wild to me that these crabs aren’t instantly considered critically endangered. Perhaps more evidence is required to confirm the data.
Of course I didn’t read the article, but harvesting doesn’t help. I live about as far inland as you can get (not Russia, tho) and there are always “fresh” snow crab legs at the local grocery store.
You should probably take it with a pinch of salt, it’s been forever since I’ve actually done statistics :o) I just remember the 6 sigma certainty thing when I used to study Biochemistry, I may well have applied it wrong here hah.
Harvesting won’t help from now on, with such a small population, but it likely wasn’t a factor in reducing the population from 6 billion.
Good enough for me. Objective analysis in a comment section is rare and refreshing. Cheers!
Seems like a pretty large domino, or am I wrong? Like how much biomass is that taken out of the food chain?
One type of snow crab has adults reaching 1-4 lbs, or 0.45 to 1.81 kg, so the round numbers would perhaps be either 2 lbs or 1 kg. Sticking with metric for laziness that’s 5,999,800 tonnes of crab. It’s roughly about the same for imperial tons also.