Stock Dynamics of Female Red King Crab in a Small Bay of the Barents Sea in Relation to Environmental Factors.

Stock-recruitment relationships depend on the total abundance of females, their fecundity, and patterns of their maturation. However, the effects of climatic conditions on the abundance, biomass, and mean weight of female red king crabs, , from the introduced population (Barents Sea) have not yet been studied. For this reason, we analyzed long-term fluctuations in stock indices and the average weight of an individual crab in a small bay of the Barents Sea and related these parameters to the dynamics of temperature conditions (temperature in January-December, mean yearly temperature, and temperature anomaly) in the sea. The average weight of a crab at age 6-9 had strong negative correlations with water temperature at lags 8 and 9, indicating faster female maturation in warm periods. Positive relationships were registered between temperature and stock indices for 15-19-year-old females at lag 4 and for 10-14-year-old females at lag 10, supporting the idea of higher survival rates of juveniles and their rapid development being a response to a pool of warm waters. Both redundancy and correlation analyses revealed seawater temperatures in June-August being the most important predictors of female abundance and biomass, indicating that favorable temperature conditions in the first 3 months of crab benthic life result in high survivorship rates for red king crabs.