Abstract
The snow crab (Chioneocetes opilio) fishery in the Barents Sea is carried out by large offshore vessels, as the fishing grounds are located far from shore and the gear must be transported back and forth over long distances. Therefore, fishers use stackable conical pots that allow large numbers of pots to be carried on deck for each trip. One of the drawbacks of using stackable pots is that the entrance is at the vertex of the conical pot, which fishers claim does not provide the desired fishing efficiency. Thus, the goal of this study was to determine whether a different pot design would improve the catch efficiency of snow crabs. We investigated the efficiency of a new type of pot called the moon pot, which provides continuous increased bait odour intensity as snow crabs make their way towards the entrance of the pot. This alteration was expected to increase catch efficiency compared to that of the conical pots used by the fleet today. However, experimental fishing results showed that the modified pots had significantly lower catch efficiency than the standard conical pots, as only ~66% of the number of crabs caught by the conical pots were caught in the moon pots. The main reason for this reduced catch efficiency likely was the initial steepness of the moon pot, which may have made it difficult for crabs to reach the pot entrance. These results demonstrated that pot design can dramatically affect catch efficiency of snow crabs.
Highlights
The snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) is a cold-water species that thrives at temperatures below 4 ̊C and typically inhabits Arctic regions
Standard conical pots used by the snow crab fishery along the east coast of Canada [6] were used as control pots
In the present study we investigated the catch efficiency of a new type of pot and compared it to that of standard conical pots used by the snow crab fleet fishing in the Barents Sea
Summary
The snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) is a cold-water species that thrives at temperatures below 4 ̊C and typically inhabits Arctic regions. In the Barents Sea, the presence of snow crab was first recorded in 1996 [1], the commercial fishery is relatively new. In the period 2012– 2015 the fishery grew very quickly, and Norwegian landings increased from 2500 kg in 2012 to 18,000 tonnes in 2015 with 11 Norwegian and 18 European Union vessels participating in the fishery [1]. In 2017 the landings were reduced to just over 3,000 tonnes because the Russian part of the Barents Sea, which is an area with a large population of snow crabs, was closed to the Norwegian and international fleets. In 2018, the snow crab quota in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea was set at 4,000 tonnes, but the total catch was only 2,677 tonnes.
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