Boats line the docks in crab season at Kodiak, Alaska, in 2012. Alaska's red king crab season was to open Tuesday, but federal managers who set catch quotas are furloughed.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska's multimillion-dollar red king crab season opened Tuesday, but most of the participating boats remained at dock because federal managers who are supposed to set individual fishing quotas are among workers still furloughed in the government shutdown.

Only boats representing a tiny fraction of the total harvest will be heading out into the Bering Sea. For that community development program, quotas are assigned by the state, with only seven vessels signed up to fish as of Tuesday.

Crabbers in the much larger haul fear that a late opening of the Bristol Bay fishery made famous by the Discovery Channel reality show, “Deadliest Catch,” will slash into their profits from the lucrative holiday market in Japan. For now, all crews can do is sit and wait at Alaska's Dutch Harbor. As far as “Deadliest Catch” captain Keith Colburn is concerned, the somber reality is that fishermen are being held politically hostage by “a bunch of knuckleheads” back East.

“We're all idle,” Colburn told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Dutch Harbor. “Were sitting here scratching our heads, going, 'Why are we not fishing?”'

Colburn's testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee last week was filmed by Discovery for the season that begins in April. The effects of the furlough on the fishery also are being documented, but Colburn hopes it will turn out to be no more than a blip in the show, if anything.

A National Marine Fisheries Service enforcement official, however, said there's been no change as far as bringing back furloughed workers.

Catch limits are set by state fishery managers, but the national agency sets the individual allocations that have not been issued.

Mark Gleason, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, is advising fishermen to sit tight in Dutch Harbor.