Abstract
Many crab fisheries around the world are managed by size, sex and season, where males are given at least one opportunity to reproduce before being harvested. Golden king crab (Lithodes aequispinus) supports a commercial fishery in Southeast Alaska and legal size is based on growth and maturity information from other parts of their range. Size-at-maturity estimates varied for crabs among seven management areas in Southeast Alaska, where male maturity estimates increased in size with increases in latitude, while maturity estimates across their North Pacific range decreased in size with increases in latitude. Depth, temperature and harvest history were not related to variation observed in male maturity estimates. Management implications from this research include reducing legal size in some areas to maximize harvest potential and increasing in others to allow male crabs the opportunity to reproduce before being harvested. A more conservative strategy would incorporate the largest maturity estimate, thus increasing the legal size which would have a negative impact to the commercial fishery, but allow male crabs the opportunity to reproduce before being harvested. This study shows the importance of understanding how life-history characteristics change over space and the challenge incorporating spatial variability for improved fisheries management.
Highlights
Minimum size limits are an established fisheries management tool that has been used to help ensure long-term sustainability of fishery stocks
Because temperature data were opportunistically collected by fishery observers and varied by which months and years were sampled across management areas, we examined seasonal and yearly variation in near-bottom temperature at 250 m, a depth representative of golden king crab habitat, using a long-term time series from a mooring station in the northern Gulf of Alaska
Male size at morphometric maturity (SMM) estimates varied significantly among management areas, with the largest difference of 40.1 mm occurring between Icy Strait and Lower Chatham Strait
Summary
Minimum size limits are an established fisheries management tool that has been used to help ensure long-term sustainability of fishery stocks. The minimum harvest size limit for male golden king crabs was originally based on growth and maturity information for red king crabs from the Gulf of Alaska, which is a different species from a different location [33,34], due to the lack of biological information on golden king crabs This size limit was later justified using biological data on golden king crab life history [29] as it became available, which consisted of growth information primarily from Frederick Sound and Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska using a tagging study [31] and SMM estimates most probably from the southeastern Bering Sea (130.0 mm CL) [9]. We estimate spatial variability in SMM and SAM, the influence of temperature, depth and harvest on spatial variation in SMM estimates, and mean spine contribution to legal-sized males with the overall goal to better inform fisheries management to sustainably manage the golden king crab fishery
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