King Crab Ecology

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King Crab Ecology

• King crab study team.

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King Crab Species of the Bering Sea

• Red King Crab Paralithodes camtschaticus Crab
  means qimgitux in Aleut and Crab means Raakax in
  Russian
• Blue King Crab Paralithodes platypus
• Golden King crab Lithodes aequispinus
• (Scarlet King Crab) Lithodes couesi

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Population of King Crab
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Why Study King Crab?

• Extremely Valuable Economically
• To understand their habitat and life history
• To understand why their population crashed
• Try to help them recover

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• The rest of the team is going to talk about the
  king crab ecology from information we got from
  scientific resources, internet, teachers.
• Well also be talking about the data we collected
  from the St. Paul Harbor and finally we have
  recommendations for the hatchery thats growing
  juvenile Blue King Crab and the Red King Crab.

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King Crab Life Cycle
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A Habitat Experiment

• The experiment showed that the juvenile crabs
  dont like sand.

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Juvenile Red King Crabtheir habitat and
distribution

• By Hannah and Anna

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Habitat of Juvenile Blue King Crab

• The Habitat of a Blue king crab is similar to the
  the red king crab.
• They stay in waters of under 50 meters.
• They live in rocky areas, with boulders, cobble
  and shell hash covered with kelp, sponges, and
  hydroids.

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Habitat of Red King Crab

• The habitat of a red king crab is also the same
  as the blue king crab.
• They also like to stay in 50 meters deep water as
  juveniles.
• They love rocky areas with boulders, and shell
  hash covered with kelp.

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Habitat of juvenile golden king crab

• Juvenile golden king crab differs from the red
  and king crab
• They tend to go to mostly sand, mud, pebbles,
  boulders, bedrock, gravel, and cobble.
• They go to reefs, channels, and ledges.

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Distribution around Saint Paul Island
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Our Research

• On Wednesday, April 10th and Thursday, April 11th
  the Marine Biology class went down to the field
  (City South Doc) to take some seawater data.
• While we were down there we tested the water
  temperature, to see if the temperature was
  suitable for crab.

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Field Research

• Temperature below the surface 0.6degrees Celsius
• Temperature above surface -1.58degrees Celsius
• Depth 29.86 feet
• Conductivity 0.047meters
• Longitude 170 degrees West, 17minutes and 114
  seconds.
• Latitude 67 degrees North, 7minutes and 520
  seconds.

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Our equipment

• Temperature
• In-situ Troll 9000
• Sbe 37-sm microcap(Seabird temperature probe)

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Method

• In-situ Troll 9000 and Seabird Temperature Probe
  With this equipment, we gently dropped the probe
  just below the surface of the water.
• We recorded data on field sheets, and data was
  recorded electronically on the temperature meter.

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Pictures of our equipment
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Underwater Sea Camera
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In-Situ 9,000 Probe
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Seabird Temperature probe
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Bering Sea King Crab

• The population for king crab has declined in
  recent decades due to
• Climate changes
• Diseases
• Egg predation
• Over fishing

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Hope for future King Crab

• Saint Paul needs to learn more of the life
  history of king crab.
• Why? To understand their natural habitat and
  lifestyle to help stable their population.

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Help save the Crab population!