Due to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, imported Russian crab is cheaper than Alaskan crab and drives U.S. crab prices down. Between 2000 and 2014, Alaskan crabbers lost an estimated $600 million from the presence of illegal Russian crab in domestic and global markets, according to a 2014 World Wildlife Fund report. An Anchorage newspaper reported in January that Russian seafood imports into the U.S. have grown nearly 70% since 2014.
Russia and the U.S. have increased efforts to track and penalize illegal crab harvests over the past decade. In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration implemented a monitoring program to trace the origins of king crab and other imported seafood, requiring importers to report key data to the agency.