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Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

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FEEDING ECOLOGY OF JUVENILE KING AND TANNER CRAB<br />

IN THE SOUTHEASTERN BERING SEA<br />

INTRODUCTION<br />

This project was initiated by NOAA's Outer Continental Shelf<br />

Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP) to determine how petroleum<br />

contaminants may reach <strong>and</strong> impact the commercially valuable crab resources<br />

of the southeastern Bering Sea. The main objectives of this project were,<br />

first, to determine the food requirements of juvenile red king crab,<br />

Paralithodes camtschatica, <strong>and</strong> tanner crab, Chionoecetes bairdi, in the<br />

waters north of the <strong>Alaska</strong> Peninsula <strong>and</strong>, secondly, to assess potential<br />

impacts from Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) development. The project<br />

entailed several tasks: the location <strong>and</strong> collection of crabs; shipboard<br />

experiments on stomach clearance rates; 24-h trawling to determine a diel<br />

feeding chronology <strong>and</strong> daily ration; determination of the carapace size -<br />

stomach volume relationships; visual examination of stomach contents;<br />

calculations of dietary composition; <strong>and</strong> construction of a caloric intake<br />

schedule. Due to grinding of food by the gastric mill, difficulties in<br />

identifying prey have confounded other food habits studies of king <strong>and</strong><br />

tanner crab (Tarverdieva, 1976,1978), but here prey types ordinarily not<br />

detectable by traditional gut analysis were identified by an immunoassay<br />

of gut contents. This state-of-the-art technique <strong>and</strong> other techniques<br />

were used to assess <strong>and</strong> correct various biases not normally considered in<br />

conventional food habits studies determining the composition of crustacean<br />

diets.<br />

This final report gives the diel feeding chronologies <strong>and</strong> daily<br />

rations of juvenile king crab in June <strong>and</strong> August of 1982. Also reported<br />

here is the species composition of the diet of juvenile king crab.<br />

Correction of dietary compostion for gut residence times indicated that<br />

soft bodied prey, especially polychaete worms, were a considerably greater<br />

proportion of the diet of juvenile king crab than conventional uncorrected<br />

analyses would indicate. The immunoassay of Feller et al. (1979) modified<br />

for the analysis of juvenile king crab stomachs gave evidence for the<br />

presence of soft bodied prey undetected by conventional gut analysis.<br />

Finally, this report synthesizes the information on the food requirements<br />

of juvenile king crab <strong>and</strong> assesses the potential impacts from OCS oil <strong>and</strong><br />

gas development.<br />

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