FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 85, NO. 3 



embryos were caught, the highest proportions oc- 

 curred in February and May. Empty egg cases 

 became proportionately more abundant from 

 June through August. The eight ovigerous fe- 

 males caught ranged from 56 to 87 mm CL. Fe- 

 cundity estimates for six ovigerous females 

 ranged from 34,000 to 160,400 embryos, averag- 

 ing 0.9 mm in diameter (Table 4). Uneyed em- 

 bryos were orange in color, whereas eyed embryos 

 were dark brown. 



Molting and Growth 



Seasonality 



Molting periodicity of hair crabs in the EBS is 

 not well understood, owing to the lack of seasonal 

 data. Summer cruises during 1979-84 turned up 

 only three molting male crabs. Molting and soft- 

 shell crabs comprised only 2.2% of males (65 

 crabs) and 8.97r of females (22 crabs) (Table 3B). 

 Molting females were more abundant in July 

 samples, but males showed no particular pattern. 



Molting was much more apparent during the 

 February 1983 cruise. Thirty percent (9 of 30) of 

 female crabs were soft shell. Among the 136 

 males captured, 9% (12) were soft shell and 11% 

 (15) were undergoing ecdysis. In contrast to the 

 1983 results, almost no molting was observed in 

 February 1985. All 56 males captured were new 

 hard shell or older, and only 1 (6.7%) of 15 females 

 was soft shell. 



In the EBS, based on the percentage of crab 

 that we classified as new hard shell each year, an 

 average of 79% of the large males 089 mm CL), 

 95% of the small males «90 mm CL), and 84% of 

 the females appeared to have molted by the time 

 the summer survey occurred. 



Size Range 



During the period 1979-84, 3,091 specimens of 

 E. isenbeckii were captured in NMFS summer 

 surveys, of which only 248 were females (Table 5). 

 The average size of males caught was 96.1 mm CL 



Table 4. — Estimated egg number and condition for six ovigerous female Ehmacrus isenbeckii 

 caugtit in the eastern Bering Sea from 1979 to 1985. Hyphens indicate no data taken. 



'Estimated from total dry weight of ciutcfi (see melfiods). 

 2No obvious difference between lengtfi and width. 



Table 5. — Descriptive statistics of Enmacrus isenbeckii caught during NMFS sur- 

 veys, 1979-84, in the eastern Bering Sea. Carapace lengths were measured from 

 the right orbit. 



538 



