A STUDY to determine the best method for collecting early juvenile king crabs has been completed successfully in Alaska, with divers gathering nearly 200 recently settled juvenile red king crabs, using artificial collectors.

The collectors were deployed in May 2010 off Indian Point near Juneau by boat, and retrieved in late July using scuba and other methods.

The collectors have an outer skin of tubular plastic netting stuffed with conditioned gillnet or artificial seaweed. It took University of Alaska Fairbanks divers one week to retrieve and process nearly 60 collectors.

Similar collection studies were conducted in 2008 and 2009 near Juneau to help determine the ideal benthic habitat for settling larvae, and to assess variability in numbers of larvae in different locations.

This year’s study refined the collection techniques by comparing scuba and boat retrieval methods using clumped gillnet or artificial seaweed in the collectors.

The gillnet and artificial seaweed are attractive to settling king crab post-larvae, which are looking for structural complexity.

Both retrieval methods were successful for collecting the crabs, and more crabs were collected using clumped gillnet than using artificial seaweed. The crabs will be used in future field predation experiments in Juneau.