Few Options Left for Industry to Avoid a Multi-Year Closure of Tanner Crab in the Bering Sea  Unless the Alaska Board of Fish agrees to schedule an emergency hearing on bairdi (tanner) crab in the next 11 days, the industry is looking at no season until 2019 at the earliest writes Peggy Parker. This summer's survey showed the female population of bairdi below a threshold for ADF&G to calculate a total allowable catch (TAC) for the upcoming season, which starts on October 15. Since it was not met this year, both next year’s survey and the 2018 survey would need to surpass that threshold before ADF&G could consider opening the fishery. The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers filed an emergency petition earlier this month, asking the Alaska Board of Fish to reconsider their harvest policy for tanner crab. The Board has a month to respond, which would be October 9. “A complete closure of the Bering Sea tanner fishery will have extremely negative socioeconomic impacts on harvesters, processors, coastal communities, and the State of Alaska when this level of revenue is unnecessarily foregone for the next several commercial seasons," said Ruth Christianson, Science Advisor for the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. In other crab industry news, the Russian government is considering additional measures aimed at suppressing crab poaching in the Sea of Okhotsk and other regions where Russian crab is produced. Russia's Border Service says crab poaching is still rampant despite recent measures taken by the government to fight the problem. Up to 30 ships have been arrested by the Russian Coast Guard in the Sea of Okhotsk under suspicion of poaching since the start of the year. Meanwhile, Tokyo's Governor Yuriko Koike said she will investigate why the new site for the Tsukiji fish market was built without a planned soil embankment that was intended to protect the market from known pollutants. The Tsukiji market is supposed to relocate to Toyosu; a move that is on hold because the site, which formerly housed a gas production facility, is contaminated with polluted soil and now water. Contractors were supposed to remove the soil and elevate the area with new dirt. Instead, concrete basements were built, which are now collecting water that is contaminated with the polluted soil. American Samoa's largest private employer, StarKist Samoa, will shut down operations during the week starting October 10th because of a lack of fish. This is  the second time in the past year StarKist Samoa has temporarily shut down due to fish supply issues. Finally, in a statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans Icewater Seafoods called for a more balanced approach to the exploitation of Northern Cod stocks. The company said that under a precautionary approach, building the stock to the necessary reference limit will take five to ten years, and should not be short-circuited by prematurely increasing fishing pressure.