Table 4. — Observed mortality in pots at retrieval for tagged king crab conrined 

 in pots of various designs or configurations; except where noted, pots were 

 unbaited. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



Analysis of the data indicates that an average of 92% of 

 large undersize king crab and 80% of small legal-size king 

 crab would escape from standard pots. Interpreted con- 

 versely, these data indicate retention of an average of 8% 

 of undersize and 20% of legal-size crab. 



With respect to crab confined in pots, experiments 

 show that the presence of herring bait or dead crab did 

 not reduce the escape of crab from the pots. Crab that es- 

 caped after 1-4 days were shown by tag recoveries not to 



have suffered additional postescape mortality as a result 

 of short-term confinement. On the other hand, 10-16 day 

 confmement resulted in reduced recovery. Any procedure 

 which would permit rapid escape of king crab from the 

 pots would, therefore, introduce healthier viable crab 

 back into the commercial stocks. 



Although we did not make a detailed analysis of cap- 

 ture of species other than king crab, commercially useful 

 fishes were found in the pots. These included the 

 valuable Pacific halibut. 



We must emphasize that we do not know how memy 



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