Abstract
Spatial distributions of fished species must be well characterized to avoid local depletions, identify critical habitat, and predict and mitigate interactions with other fisheries. The Bristol Bay red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) fishery is one of the largest crab fisheries in Alaska. Summer crab distributions have been well documented by decades of bottom trawl surveys. However, crab movement and distribution are poorly understood outside the summer survey period, which creates several management challenges. One important component of fishery management is the existence of no-trawl zones, which are intended to protect crab from bottom trawl fisheries. However, it is difficult to evaluate the placement of no-trawl zones, because most crab bycatch occurs in trawl fisheries during winter when crab distributions are unknown. Daily fishing logs, kept by skippers in the red king crab fleet since 2005, contain detailed information on the spatial distribution of catch and effort of legal sized male crab during the autumn crab fishery. However, data contained in these hand-written logbooks have not been readily accessible. We digitized daily fishing logs from 2005 to 2016 and used spatial information on catch and effort to infer geographic distributions of legal sized male king crab during the crab fishing season. Changes in distribution were tracked across this 12-yr period and comparisons were made between warm and cold temperature regimes. In warm years (2005, 2014–2016), crab aggregated in the center of Bristol Bay, Alaska, while in cold years (2007–2013) they were closer to the Alaska Peninsula. The majority of crab were caught in no-trawl areas (63.4% on average), but variations occurred among years and with temperature regime (40.0–86.8% in no-trawl zones). As temperatures continue to shift in the Bering Sea, it will be important to continue monitoring crab distributions outside the summer survey period.
Highlights
The exploitation of red king crab (RKC), Paralithodes camtschaticus, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, has had a long history, beginning with Japanese harvests in the 1920s [1]
Based on autumn crab distributions from Daily fishing logs (DFLs), we evaluated the effectiveness of the trawl closure areas, and how shifts in RKC distribution relate to large-scale temperature regimes in the Bering Sea
Hot spots detected using observer data generally overlapped with those identified using DFL data, the degree of correspondence varied among years (Fig 4)
Summary
The exploitation of red king crab (RKC), Paralithodes camtschaticus, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, has had a long history, beginning with Japanese harvests in the 1920s [1]. In the late 1960s the domestic fishery greatly expanded, with harvests peaking in 1980 and rapidly declining over the few years, resulting in fishery closure in 1983 and again in 1994 and 1995 [2,3]. Bristol Bay RKC have recovered to smaller yet sustainable stock levels [2] that.
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