1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Snow crab
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.416.7007; http://doc.nprb.org/web/emc/nprb_modeling_prjs/508_Armstrong.pdf

A. Project Title: Female Effective Reproductive Output (FERO) of the snow crab stock in the EBS: how much, why, and implications for fishery management. (Short Title: snow crab FERO) B. Proposal Summary: Abundance of snow crab in the EBS has dropped to minimum historical levels. At the same time, the geographic range of the female population has contracted substantially towards the NW. In this project we address the following related questions: Why are females where they are now?; how large is their effective reproductive output given where they are?, and how does this affect recruitment? We propose to utilize existing (largely sub-utilized) data and to build upon recent research results, emphasizing a spatially-explicit approach with attention to specific hypotheses on the dynamics of coupled life-history categories (juvenile/immatures, primi/multiparous females, MI/MM males). We address four specific hypotheses: (H1) snow crab settle and grow to maturity in the Middle Domain; (H2) after contraction of the stock to the north, cod predation on juveniles controls the southward expansion of the range of immature females; (H3) declining recruitment tracks a decline in the stock’s female effective reproductive output (FERO); and (H4) the spatial configuration of mating opportunities, expressed by the Operational