With only one tanner crab processing plant left in Alaska, which by law cannot process more than 30% of the total volume, a significant amount of this species may be left unprocessed, unless regulators come up with a regulation change. The California dungeness crab fishery is still closed due to high occurrences of domoic acid in the crabs caught. California crabbers are now pushing for changes in the regulations so that they can resume the fishery.

The Russian Federal Agency of Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo) has approved a quota of 41 500 tonnes of snow crab to be caught in the Russian Far East in 2016. This is slightly higher than 2015, when the quota was 39 500 tonnes. At the same time, Russian authorities are introducing incentives to assure that more of the snow crab caught in Russian waters is sold on the domestic market. Currently, most of the catch is exported.

In recent years, snow crab has become a popular target for Norwegian crab fishermen. At the North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF) in March in Bergen, Norway, it was estimated that Norwegian catches of snow crab might increase rapidly, from 200 tonnes in 2013 and 9 800 tonnes in 2015 to as much as 50 000 to 75 000 tonnes within ten years. New investments will be needed, particularly to enable the fleet to land the crab live for on-shore processing (Source: NASF).