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Fishes
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Advances in Crab Fisheries
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Advances in Crab Fisheries

A special issue of Fishes (ISSN 2410-3888). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Aquaculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2024) | Viewed by 2924

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Darrell Mullowney

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, St. John's, NL, Canada
Interests: crab; crustaceans; stock assessment; fisheries management; climate change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Crab species form the basis of valuable fisheries supporting the social, economic, and ecological needs of societies spanning from the coldest to warmest habitual areas of earth. Crabs occupy both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, with global-scale exploitation of them growing faster than fisheries of most other major groups, and increasingly as luxury commodity resources. Crabs feature a high diversity in geographic ranges and variations in life history strategies among species and populations, but most species share a common attribute of having two overarching processes affecting their productivity, namely fisheries exploitation and environmental quality. The long persistence of crabs on earth, in addition to their erratic growth patterns and generally low mobility, help make crabs an ideal subject for studying the impacts of changes in exploitation strategies and climate variables by underscoring the importance of observed changes in species’ behaviours and success resulting from both broad-scale and localized changes in exploitation strategies and environmental processes.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to highlight recent and potential improvements in our ability to directly or indirectly influence elements of the exploitation and environmental processes through fisheries management, as well as highlighting advances in our biological and ecological understanding of crab species. In particular, the suite of papers herein will detail the impacts of recent and on-going changes in fishing gear technologies, fisheries management philosophies, and climate change outcomes, taking a balanced approach to evaluate the potential for both positive and negative impacts of changes within and across social, economic, and ecological realms.

Dr. Darrell Mullowney
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fishes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • crab
  • crab fisheries
  • crab life histories
  • crab pots
  • crab productivity
  • crab traps
  • fisheries management
  • gear selectivity
  • stock assessment
  • sustainability

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 4750 KiB  
Article
Hauling Snow Crab Traps in Eastern Canada: A Study Documenting Tension in Ropes
by Genevieve Peck, Tomas Araya-Schmidt and Paul D. Winger
Fishes 2024, 9(5), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes9050154 - 26 Apr 2024
Viewed by 445
Abstract
Entanglement in commercial fishing gear is one of the main factors inhibiting the recovery of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Installing low-breaking-strength (LBS) components in the buoy lines and main lines of stationary fishing gear may be a viable solution for some [...] Read more.
Entanglement in commercial fishing gear is one of the main factors inhibiting the recovery of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Installing low-breaking-strength (LBS) components in the buoy lines and main lines of stationary fishing gear may be a viable solution for some fisheries. But is it an effective solution for deep-water trap fisheries? This study quantified in-line rope tensions observed during fishing operations for snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. We conducted a controlled fishing experiment in which we documented the loads experienced while hauling fleets of traps. The results showed that several factors contributed to the loads observed, including the components of the traps, the presence of crabs, and environmental conditions such as wind direction and wave height. According to the statistical models, the maximum tension from the estimated marginal means was 477.53 kgf in the buoy line and 987.99 kgf in the main line for the baited hauls, which exceeds the safe working load (154 kgf) of the proposed low-breaking-strength components. Our results suggest that LBS components are not a viable solution for this deep-water fishery. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Crab Fisheries)
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12 pages, 1533 KiB  
Article
Size-Structured Method Applied to the Brown Crab Fishery Callinectes bellicosus in the Gulf of California
by Gilberto Genaro Ortega-Lizárraga, Horacio Alberto Muñoz-Rubí, Guillermo Rodríguez-Domínguez, Raúl Pérez-González, Jaime Edzael Mendívil-Mendoza and Eugenio Alberto Aragón-Noriega
Fishes 2024, 9(4), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes9040110 - 22 Mar 2024
Viewed by 996
Abstract
The crab fishery of the genus Callinectes is one of the most important fisheries in Mexico. Sonora and Sinaloa are the states on the eastern coast of the Gulf of California, the mainland coast. Sinaloa encompasses the greatest production in Mexico of these [...] Read more.
The crab fishery of the genus Callinectes is one of the most important fisheries in Mexico. Sonora and Sinaloa are the states on the eastern coast of the Gulf of California, the mainland coast. Sinaloa encompasses the greatest production in Mexico of these species, in particular the Bahía Santa Maria La Reforma (BSMR), supplying the most important catches. A mandatory administrative document for the fishery is the Management Plan of Crab. One of the main weaknesses found in it for Sonora and Sinaloa is the lack of fishery assessment in both states. For this reason, a size-structured method called CASA (Catch-at-Size Analysis) was applied in the BSMR, in the seasons 2000, 2011, and 2014, to C. bellicosus. The first catch size (CW50%) estimated for females was 97.5, 102.5, and 100 mm, while in males, it was estimated at 117.5, 107.5, and 102.5 mm. In the specific case of fishing mortality (F), the algorithm allowed us to find that in the larger sizes, a greater fishing pressure is applied for both females and males, yielding a weighted exploitation rate of 0.047 (2000), 0.119 (2011), and 0.426 (2014) for females and 0.045 (2000), 0.295 (2011), and 0.132 (2014) for males, all below 50% (E = 0.50). The crab C. bellicosus in BSMR is not at risk of overexploitation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Crab Fisheries)
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12 pages, 3447 KiB  
Article
Assessing the Technical and Economic Viability of Galvanizing Snow Crab (Chionoecetes opilio) Traps
by Pete Brown, Tomas Araya-Schmidt, Terry Bungay and Paul D. Winger
Fishes 2024, 9(3), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes9030109 - 19 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1037
Abstract
Commercial harvesting of snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio) began in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, in 1967. Today, the fishery consists of 2188 active fishing licenses and has grown into the province’s most economically valuable fishery. Snow crabs are captured using conical traps [...] Read more.
Commercial harvesting of snow crabs (Chionoecetes opilio) began in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, in 1967. Today, the fishery consists of 2188 active fishing licenses and has grown into the province’s most economically valuable fishery. Snow crabs are captured using conical traps consisting of a mild carbon steel frame, hard plastic entry funnel and a jacket of polyethylene netting. The frames of these traps corrode over time, which is expedited by being deployed in marine environments and stored on land near the ocean when not in use. As a result, there is interest within the community to increase the longevity of crab traps. One solution is to galvanize the steel frames prior to installing the funnel and netting. However, before harvesters transition to galvanized traps, two questions must be answered. Will the use of galvanized steel negatively impact catch rates? Will the life cycle of a crab trap be extended sufficiently to justify the additional cost of galvanizing? This study employed a generalized linear mixed model to evaluate the catch of legal-sized male crabs (CPUE) during the commercial fishery as a function of three trap frame treatments (old traditional, new traditional and new galvanized). We also assessed the economic viability of galvanizing trap frames by evaluating the life cycle cost (LCC) of traditional and galvanized traps to the harvester. The LCC was calculated over a range of inflation (0–6%) and discount (3–20%) rates. Our results found no significant difference in CPUE between new traps (traditional vs. galvanized) and concluded that except during instances of very high discount rates (12.9–19.9%), it is economically favourable to galvanize crab trap frames. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Crab Fisheries)
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