About 25 years ago, University of Oregon biology professor Alan Shanks, recently retired, started daily counts of the bean-sized baby Dungeness crabs washing toward shore in Coos Bay.
Over time, he found that the number of megalopae, or larval crabs, counted through the summer correlates with the crab catch four years later, when they’re large enough to eat.
But, Shanks told KLCC, factors such as marine heat waves, which began around 2014, can skew the data…