Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Red King Crab Stock Assessment

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Red King Crab

It’s a beautiful July day on the Inside Waters of southeast Alaska near Juneau, and a team of biologists aboard the research vessel Medeia is pulling crab pots. They’ve set hundreds of pots targeting king crab, but that’s not all that they catch and release. When a pot hits the table on the deck and crabs spill out, they go to work, first sorting crab by species. Every summer they work to assess the red king crab stocks in these waters.

Crabs are sorted by sex, measured for size, and the shell conditioned is assessed to provide an estimate of the age class. It takes about six years for a red king crab to reach legal size for crabbers to keep. Age class helps biologist estimate recruitment – how many young crabs are going to be recruited into the harvestable stock in the future. Crabs are examined for diseases and parasites. Biologists also look at the reproductive status of female crabs – the clutch fullness and the condition of the eggs.

What they learn will be compared to previous years’ data and used to estimate the mature and legal male crab biomass, to identify if restrictions should be applied to any specific areas, and help determine how many crab can be harvested in the summer and winter commercial and personal use fisheries.