The improvement of size selection in red king crab traps

Summary

The box-shaped design of square one camber pots is exclusively used in the king crab fisheries in Norway. There is no requirement to use the escape rings in the pot for selecting crabs under minimum size out of the pot. The goal of this project was to document the effectiveness of using extra camber sewn into the traditional crab pot, which only small crab under commercial size had access in to, improve the selections of the crabs under commercial size. The trials showed that it is possible to improve the selection using extra camber. The video recording from the fieldwork showed the crabs of commercial size easily went out of the entrance and the under sized crabs were using the escape rings also as entrance into the pot. More research must be done to develop a better king crab pot, that captures more selectively and that do not emit commercial crab.