| Summary: | The recent invasions of the red king crab (RKC) and the snow crab (SC) in the Barents Sea represent the sorts of integrated ecological and economic shifts we may expect as climate change affects arctic seas. Economic incentives and ecological unknowns have combined to change the current and potentially future productivity and profitability of the Barents ecosystem in complex and interacting ways. We examine potential ecological-economic trajectories for these crabs’ continued expansions in the Arctic and how the profitability, the joint and national management structures in Norway and Russia, and the uncertainties regarding ecological impacts, co-determine the potential paths. We use these results and tenets of environmental and resource economics to suggest improved management strategies that better integrate the ecological unknowns into management in order to increase social welfare in the long run. We compare differences in the ecology and economics of the two species to enhance understanding of the trade-offs inherent in managing these economically profitable yet risky invaders. We then expand the application by using these ongoing invasions to illustrate the anticipated disruptions (with potentially both positive and negative impacts) from other introductions or range expansions of commercial species and the management steps that should be taken at earlier stages, including monitoring and preventive measures, in the changing ecological processes to minimize negative impacts.
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