FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 85, NO. 3 



85 cm 



n 



B 



50 Pots 



Figure 4. — Construction design and fishing method of Japanese hair crab pots. A, Side 

 View: 1, lower ring of steel, upper ring and lateral bars of bamboo; 2, baitcan; 3, 

 polyethylene cylinder entrance (28 cm top diameter, 25 cm bottom diameter, 19 cm high); 

 4, branch line attached to lateral bars and lower ring. Mesh shown only on top and one 

 side. B, Top view: C, Longline method of pot fishing (fm = fathoms). 



fishery for hair crab during the summer of 1980 

 with the use of small conical crab pots (Mer- 

 culieff^). All hair crab harvested in the United 

 States have been exported to Japan as live or 

 whole-boiled product, and prices to fishermen 

 have ranged from $0.50 to $1.60/lb. 



MATERIALS AND METHODS 



Hair crab were caught by NMFS during annual 

 summer trawl surveys (primarily designed to as- 

 sess the abundance of king crab, Tanner or snow 

 crab, and ground-fish species) in the EBS from 

 1971 to the present, but detailed data on hair crab 

 have been collected only since 1979. Fishing was 

 conducted with a 400-mesh eastern otter trawl in 



^Merculieff L. 1981. Final report on the Pribilof hair crab 

 project. Unpuhi. manuscr., 18 p. Tanadgusix Corp., St. Paul 

 Lsland, AK 99660. 



1979-80 and with an 83-112 eastern otter trawl in 

 1981-84; effective widths were 12.2 and 15.2 m, 

 respectively (both nets were described by Wathne 

 (1977)). Studies comparing the two nets showed 

 no differences in size selection for king and Tan- 

 ner crabs. We assumed the same for hair crab, 

 which were too scarce for comparison. These dif- 

 ferences in net widths have very minimal effect 

 on the presentation of crab abundance, which is 

 by order of magnitude (0-1, 1-10, 10-100 crab/nmi 

 towed). 



In all years, the survey area extended from the 

 Alaskan coast out to approximately the 200 m 

 isobath and included Bristol Bay and the Pribilof 

 Islands area, where hair crab densities are usu- 

 ally greatest (Fig. 5). Only the northern limit of 

 the survey area varied annually. Hair crab were 

 also collected during NMFS cruises to the EBS in 

 February of 1983 and 1985 and during an Outer 

 Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment 



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