A high number of red king crabs, Paralithodes camtschaticus, captured in the Norwegian commercial trap fishery have to be returned to the sea because they are females or sublegal males. In the present study, a comparative fishing trial was performed to investigate whether escape openings in traps lead to lower catches of small king crabs. Traps equipped with circular escape openings with an inner diameter wider than 160 mm retained legal crabs, while catches of sublegal male crabs became significantly reduced. Small female king crabs had a lower escape rate from traps with escape openings than small males.
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Salthaug et al. (2004) studied this question.
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