Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

extent in 1982) did we have the opportunity to plan systematic collections
related to hypotheses of species biology. Even in those years our
program was a small, opportunistic portion of larger missions that
limited that scope of work accomplished. Samples from years 1976-1979
came from several ichthyoplankton and zooplankton surveys that were, in
cases, extremely helpful and relevant to our decapod study. But some
collections were meager or far removed from areas of principal king and
Tanner crab distribution and, consequently, only partially contributed
to analyses of annual and regional differences in larval population
dynamics.
The majority of collections were made during May and June of each
year. The study suffered somewhat from lack of thorough collections in
April to characterize time and area of hatch (more so for king crab),
and also from few samples through July and August to better fix the period
of metamorphosis to the benthos. Spatial representation was best over
the middle, and outer shelf where the PROBES study was conducted for
several years (see Section 2.0), and thus both species of Tanner crab
and pandalid shrimp are the taxa where larval biology is best documented
(Sections 4.0 and 6.0, respectively). Since very few samples were taken
near the Pribilof Islands, nearshore along the North Aleutian Shelf and
also in Bristol Bay from 1976 to 1981, a somewhat incomplete picture of
both blue and red king crab larval ecology and biology has emerged,
although collections in 1982 nearshore along the NAS have improved
knowledge of the latter species (Section 3.0).
Despite these shortcomings, the sum of data presented in this
report is the most comprehensive study of larval decapods in the south-
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