134 
Fishery Bulletin 116(2) 
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Figure 3 
The proportion of Dungeness crab (Cancer magister ) 
tagged and released between October 2012 and April 2014 
whose tags were returned (vertical bars) and the propor¬ 
tion of tagged crab that were assigned a reflex impairment 
score of 0 (i.e., no missing reflexes; dots) by fishery for (A) 
the commercial ocean fishery off Oregon and recreational 
fisheries in Yaquina Bay, Oregon, (B) the recreational boat 
fishery, and (C) the shoreside recreational fishery. The re¬ 
flex impairment score was further differentiated by sex 
and shell hardness. The numbers above the vertical bars 
indicate the total number of crabs for each category that 
were tagged and released. 
crab whose tags were not returned. Also, nonre- 
turned tags were on smaller crab, on average, than 
those returned, and the minimum size was smaller. 
There was minimal cross-over among the 3 fisheries 
(Fig. 2). Of tags released in the commercial fishery, 
90% were recaptured during commercial fishing op¬ 
erations. For those tagged during recreational fish¬ 
ing by boat, 96% were recaptured by recreational 
fishing and 3% by commercial fishing. For those re¬ 
leased at the Newport Pier, 96% were recaptured by 
recreational fishing and 4% by another means. 
Commercial ocean fishery There were 13 tag and re¬ 
lease events for the commercial ocean fishery, and 
10% of tags were returned (278 of 2884; Table 2). 
Males had higher tag return rates than females 
(16% vs. 6%), and, for both sexes, hard-shell crab 
had higher return rates than soft-shell (10% vs. 5%; 
Fig. 3). For female hard- and soft-shell crab, and 
male hard- and soft-shell crab, the percentages of 
tags applied to score-0 crab were 81%, 86%, 89%, 
and 92%, respectively. The proportion of tags re¬ 
turned was highest when released at the start of 
the fishing season (2011-12 season opened on 15 
December; 2012-13 season on 31 December; and 
2013-14 season on 16 December), and decreased 
over the following months toward the end of the sea¬ 
son (15 August; Fig. 4). This pattern was observed 
regardless of the composition of tagged crab, by sex 
and shell hardness, or the proportion of tagged crab 
that were score-0. Similarly, an evaluation of the cu¬ 
mulative proportion of tags returned over time, by 
release event, revealed higher overall return rates 
when tags were released closer to the beginning of 
the season, and that days-at-large influenced overall 
returns less than month of release (Fig. 5). 
Recreational fisheries For the recreational bay fish¬ 
eries by boat and shoreside, there were 19 and 8 
release events, respectively (Table 2), and, 13% (122 
of 911) and 10% (30 of 298) of tags were returned. 
For tags recovered by recreational fishing gear, 66% 
were caught in pots and 25% in rings. For the “by 
boat” fishery, 3% of injured crab were returned com¬ 
pared with 14% of noninjured crab (all other vari¬ 
ables combined). Also, although return rates for 
this fishery were similar for crab with hard- and 
soft-shells (15% to 16% for males; 6% and 5% for 
females), overall return rates for females were lower 
than for males (Fig. 3). Patterns in tag-return data 
suggest that the probability of return was not clear¬ 
ly linked with reflex impairment score or shell hard¬ 
ness (Fig. 3), and was lower in general than the oth¬ 
er fisheries. Finally, unlike the commercial fishery, 
there were no clear temporal patterns in returns. 
For the “shoreside” fishery, tag-return rates were 
higher for males than for females (11% vs. 6%; Ta¬ 
ble 2), and, within sex, for hard-shell crab than for 
soft-shell crab (8% vs. 0% for females; 11% vs. 7% 
for males), regardless of the proportion that were 
score-0 (Fig. 3). Also for this fishery, there were 
