FISHERY BULLETIN. VOL. 85, NO. 3 



success in entering a side entry trap whose en- 

 trances were parallel to the current (Miller 1978). 

 Although our traps were deployed parallel to sur- 

 face current, their orientation on the bottom rela- 

 tive to bottom current is unknown. We are assum- 

 ing that golden crabs were successful in locating 

 the entrance and were retained longer in the top 

 entry Florida trap than in the Fathoms Plus trap. 

 It is possible, however, that golden crab were 

 equally or more successful in locating the side 

 entrances of the Fathoms Plus trap but that es- 

 capement, especially of smaller golden crab, was 

 higher. This would explain the capture of few- 

 er but larger individuals by the Fathoms Plus 

 trap. 



The overwhelming dominance of males in this 

 study contrasts with results reported in other geo- 

 graphic areas for golden crab. Luckhurst (in 

 press) noted that sex ratio in his sample (n = 244) 

 of G. fenneri from Bermuda waters was approxi- 

 mately 1:1. Otwell et al. (1984) noted that males 

 tended to be more abundant at greater depths 

 (>540 m) in the Gulf of Mexico; however, they 

 cautioned that trap design may influence the per- 

 centage of male crabs caught. Commercial crab- 

 bers noted a decline in catch rates and number of 

 male G. fenneri with increasing depth on the 

 slope in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (National 

 Marine Fisheries Service fn. 5). We also found 

 increased abundance of females at greater depths, 

 although our results are limited due to the small 

 number of females collected. This is apparently 

 not an artifact of sampling with only the Fathoms 

 Plus trap in the deepest stratum since more fe- 

 males were collected in the Florida trap than with 

 the Fathoms Plus trap when only strata 1-3 were 

 considered. Segregation of the sexes by depth has 

 been observed in several studies of G. quinque- 

 dens. Wigley et al. (1975) collected more female 

 red crabs than males, but this dominance was 

 limited to intermediate depths (320-503 m). Ganz 

 and Herrmann (1975) similarly noted dominance 

 by male red crab at depths >685 m off Rhode 

 Island. This same pattern was noted for red crab 

 in the vicinity of Norfolk Canyon where females 

 were more abundant than males from depths 

 <600 m (Haefner and Musick 1974; Haefner 

 1978). In Canadian waters, however, female red 

 crabs were reported by Stone and Bailey (1980) to 

 be considerably less abundant than males. Al- 

 though they attributed this discrepancy to trap 

 bias, another study in the same general area 

 found females were present but highly contagious 

 in distribution. Whether seasonal migrations re- 



lated to mating or spawning occur as hypothe- 

 sized by Wigley et al. (1975) for G. quinquedens 

 remains to be substantiated. What is evident 

 from our results is that male G. fenneri are domi- 

 nant in depth strata where catch per unit of effort 

 is highest. 



Size-related distribution of G. fenneri with 

 depth, similar to that reported for red crab, may 

 occur in the South Atlantic Bight. We found the 

 largest crabs in the shallowest (274-366 m) and 

 deepest (733-823 m) strata. A clear trend of size- 

 related up-slope migration such as Wigley et al. 

 (1975) reported for G. quinquedens is not appar- 

 ent, however, because of trap bias for capture of 

 larger crabs of both sexes. Otwell et al. (1984) also 

 noted no pattern in size of golden crab by depth 

 for either sex. Tagging studies of red crab off 

 southern New England provided no evidence for 

 migration patterns and indicated instead that 

 tagged crabs seldom moved more than 20 km 

 from their site of release (Lux et al. 1982). 



The size composition of golden crab from our 

 study showed that crabs become trappable as 

 small as 85 mm CW but that the greatest propor- 

 tion of trapped individuals is >100 mm CW. Over 

 90% of all individuals collected exceeded 114 mm 

 CW which is the minimum size of red crab ac- 

 cepted for commercial utilization (Wigley et al. 

 1975). A much smaller proportion (52%) of golden 

 crab >114 mm was indicated in size-frequency 

 distributions of trap-caught golden crab near 

 Bermuda (Luckhurst in press). Although Otwell 

 et al. (1984) did not present size and weight- 

 frequency data for golden crab in the Gulf of Mex- 

 ico, they found mean size of male crabs ranged 

 from 155 to 163 mm with mean weight extremes 

 of 1.07-1.15 kg, while females were smaller with 

 mean CW ranging from 119 to 135 mm and mean 

 weight extremes of 0.45-0.50 kg. These data and 

 those from our study suggest that the average 

 size of golden crab from the South Atlantic Bight 

 and Gulf of Mexico is larger than the average size 

 of red crab reported along the eastern United 

 States and Canada. Wigley et al. (1975) reported 

 average width of male G. quinquedens was 99 mm 

 with an average weight of 413 g. Average width 

 of all females from their study was 90 mm with a 

 mean weight of 244 g. Comparisons of size compo- 

 sition between the two studies must be qualified, 

 however, by a caveat that differences in sampling 

 methods probably influenced sample statistics. 

 The apparent larger size of golden crab may be 

 better substantiated by maximum width and 

 weight measurements, which for our study were 



558 



