Yochum et al. A comparison of methods for evaluating mortality of discarded Cancer magister 
133 
Map showing locations where Dungeness crab (Cancer magister ) were tagged and 
released between October 2012 and April 2014 for the commercial ocean fishery 
and for recreational fisheries (left panel) and release and recapture locations of 
crabs released during ride-along commercial ocean fishing trips only (right panel). 
The dots (right panel) indicate recapture locations and the lines connected to the 
release location indicate the total Euclidean distance between release and recap¬ 
ture locations. 
fishery (December-February; Fig. 2); however, it is dif¬ 
ficult to disentangle movement of the crab from that of 
the fishermen (Demory 5 ; Hildenbrand et al. 6 ; Barry 10 ). 
For tag return rates, the highest was for male hard¬ 
shell crab (16%, 289 of 1832), followed by male soft- 
shell crab (11%, 26 of 236), female hard-shell crab (6%, 
112 of 1930), and female soft-shell crab (3%, 3 of 95; 
Table 2; Fig. 3). For score-0 crab only, the proportions 
10 Barry, S. 1983. Coastal Dungeness crab project. Wash¬ 
ington Dep. Fish., Proj. Compl. Rep. Project No. 1-135-R, 60 
p. Washington Dep. Fish., Olympia, WA. 
of returns did not change from the values listed above, 
with the exception of returns for male soft-shell crab 
(10%). For all sex and shell hardness combinations, the 
average score for noninjured crab was lower than that 
for injured crab (all combined: 0.18 noninjured; 0.49 
for injured). With respect to returns by score, the com¬ 
mercial and shoreside fisheries had decreased returns 
as score increased, whereas there was no clear pattern 
for the recreational bay fishery from a boat. 
Differences were detected between tagged crab that 
were and were not recaptured (Table 3). Returned tags 
were from crab that had lower scores, on average, than 
