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Thanks to new federal rules, crab boats are guaranteed a fixed share of each year's allowable catch. Crab skippers want their share to consist of the most visually appealing crab, which command the highest prices at the dock. When they bring aboard cosmetically inferior crabs, they have a strong incentive to toss them back and keep gunning for the better looking ones.

Last season, 677,000 legally caught crabs were thrown overboard - a 24-fold increase over the previous year, before the guaranteed quota share system started. One in every five crabs brought on board under the new quota system got the heave-ho.

All that discarded crab might not be a problem, except for one unfortunate fact: An estimated 20 percent of the crab tossed overboard will soon die from the trauma of being caught.

That doesn't matter to the crabbers. Those dead crabs don't count against their catch limit. When skippers are high-grading for the best crab, they're behaving rationally in an irrational system that actually rewards this kind of waste.

The federal-state panel in charge of Alaska's high-seas crab fishing urgently needs to set new rules that will end wasteful crab discards. One way is to say that any legal crab brought aboard counts against their share of the catch. A more liberal alternative would let skippers keep throwing crab back, but since about 20 percent die, that 20 percent would be charged to the skippers' quota.

Crab fishermen are talking among themselves about the need to stop high-grading and wasting crab before the government steps in. That voluntary approach is too late and allows too much room for further waste. At this point, stern new regulations are justified to make sure last season's wasteful avalanche of discarded and dying crab doesn't happen again.