Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

mm) also occur in similiar habitat as well as others offering shelter
(Fishman and Armstrong, personal communication). Under an oil platform
off California, Wolfson et al (1979) found shell hash from mussels with a
mean depth of 3 m. If such shell piles develop under platforms in the
Bering Sea, they could offer increased habitat for the recruitment of the
smallest juvenile king crab in an otherwise predominantly sandy area.
If an oil spill reaches the area of juvenile crab abundance off Port
Moller, potential indirect effects from spilled oil even to the 40-70 m
depths where the larger juveniles occur cannot be dismissed although
direct lethal effects seem unlikely. Studies after the TSESIS oil spill
in the Baltic Sea demonstrate that hydrocarbons from spilled oil can reach
deep soft bottoms to produce observable effects on the benthic infauna
(Kineman et al., 1980). Following the TSESIS spill hydrocarbons were
sedimented to the 30-40 m bottom after attachment to particulates and
through incorporation into copepod fecal pellets (Boehm et al., 1980).
The contaminated particulates and fecal pellets were not apparently
incorporated immediately into bottom sediments because elevated burdens
were not found in surface sediment grabs. Rather the depositing matter
accumulated in the nepheloid layer at the water/sediment interface.
Hydrocarbon concentrations in material recovered from sediment traps
ranged up to 3.276 mg/g for aliphatics and 3.624 mg/g for aromatics. The
main effect of the contaminated sediment was the disappearance of the
amphipods perhaps through emigration and depression of meiofaunal
densities (Elmgren et al., 1980). Densities of other infauna appeared
unaffected. Small crustaceans were 2 to 3% of the diet of the larger
juvenile king crab so that the crab does not appear to be highly
vulnerable to their loss.
Other events following the TSESIS spill have implications for juvenile
king crab. Whereas the densities of the clam, Macoma balthica, were not
reduced, the clam did accumulate high burdens of hydrocarbons even at
stations with little or no hydrocarbon burden in the surface sediment
(Boehm et al., 1980). The clams were apparently accumulating hydrocarbons
from the contaminated floc in the nepheloid layer. The burdens rose, fell
and rose again 10 months after the spill. The surprising rise in the
course of apparent depuration was attributed to the reintroduction of
contaminated floc by bottom currents.
Juvenile king crab in August gained 25% of their caloric intake from
clams so that potential accumulation of hydrocarbons in clam tissue raises
the question of hydrocarbon accumulation in the crabs. Whereas mollusks
can accumulate hydrocarbons from contaminated sediment, sediment-dwelling
polychaetes, the major food of the juvenile king crab, do not accumulate
hydrocarbons from food or sediment (Neff and Anderson, 1981). Two crabs
254