Unalaska, AK – A new cooperative research project is looking at opilio crab bycatch mortality. Researchers want to know how many of the female and sublegal male crabs that are caught during the fishery survive after being put back into the water. It is illegal to keep them. Before the fishery was rationalized, fishery managers assumed that 50 percent of the bycatch crabs died. Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation cooperative research coordinator Earl Krygier said that number might be lower now.

"Right now with a 50 percent mortality on both opilio and Bairdi Tanner crab, if in fact that number is lower, that will re-calculate into the available retained catch and provide an increase in the harvest."

Krygier said fishermen used to hastily discard the illegal crab as they rushed to catch as many crab as possible before the other boats. Now, fishermen handle them more gently, if at all. "They're sent down chutes that are then fed water and the water moves them gently off over the side and they drop in."

Researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game just began collecting data on the effects of the new handling methods on opilio crabs. To see if the crabs will survive being caught in pots then picked up and put back into the water, researchers are testing the crabs' reflexes.

"Which means they will pull a mouth part, move an eye, squeeze a leg, hold them upside down," Krygier explained. "And how fast the crabs respond will give us a reflex activity number and the combination of those six numbers will tell us basically whether or not that crab is going to live or die."

Researchers will collect data on three trips early in the season and an additional trip later in the season when the crabs are larger and healthier. They will also collect information from various industry players on what methods the crab fleet uses to return bycatch to the sea. The research, which is funded by the North Pacific Research Board, will be used by the crab plan team next fall to determine what portion of the total allowable catch needs to be reserved for bycatch.