{"id":9324,"date":"2016-05-31T12:02:49","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T16:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/?p=9324"},"modified":"2016-05-31T12:05:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T16:05:36","slug":"jonah-crabs-managing-an-emerging-fishery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/jonah-crabs-managing-an-emerging-fishery\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah crabs: Managing an emerging fishery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rock

Rock crab (cancer irroratus) left, and Jonah crab (cancer borealis), right. The two species can be distinguished in a few ways. First, rock crab have purplish-brown spots on the carapace, while Jonah crabs have yellow spots. Second, rock crabs have smooth edges to the teeth on the edge of the carapace. Jonah crabs can be slightly larger than rock crabs and typically have black-tipped claws. (MA DMF graphic)<\/p><\/div>\n

ALEXANDRIA, VA \u2013 As fish begin to move and modify their behavior in response to changes in the ocean, fishermen are moving and adapting, too.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ACMFC) initiated the Jonah crab Fishery Management Plan (FMP) which takes effect June 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for this species,\u201d said Megan Ware, FMP coordinator for American lobster and now Jonah crab. \u201cIt\u2019s the first coastwide regulations for Jonah crab.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fishery evolved from a declining Southern New England lobster fishery.\u00a0 As lobster fishermen looked for new, economically-viable species, they turned to harvesting the plentiful crab with sizeable claws that were already showing up in their traps.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrices of dungeness crabs have skyrocketed,\u201d Ware said. \u201cFishermen responded by substituting crab (Jonah) that\u2019s more economical and high in demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

This created a $13 million fishery by 2014, up from $1.5 million in 2000.\u00a0 That translates into 17 million crabs now harvested mainly from lobster traps.<\/p>\n

But there are challenges to managing a new fishery, such as having little or no data on the crab, or having different names used for it in different areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Maine, they call it a rock crab, so it can be confusing on which species is being managed,\u201d said Ware.\u00a0 Part of her job has been to make sure everyone is reporting landings for the same crab.<\/p>\n

Little is known about the crab\u2019s life history.\u00a0 Although the NOAA Fisheries\u2019 Northeast Fisheries Science Center collects Jonah crab data during its spring and fall trawls, the fishery is so new it hasn\u2019t been analyzed…<\/p>\n

\"CFN-6_16-cover\"To get the rest of this story and much more – you’ll need the JUNE 2016 issue of\u00a0Commercial Fisheries News.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

PURCHASE a Single PRINT edition of CFN that is delivered by MAIL.\u00a0PRINT EDITION<\/a>
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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ALEXANDRIA, VA \u2013 As fish begin to move and modify their behavior in response to changes in the ocean, fishermen are moving and adapting, too. Last year, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ACMFC) initiated the Jonah crab Fishery Management Plan (FMP) which takes effect June 1. \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for this species,\u201d said … <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,265,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jonah-crabs","category-june-16","category-regulations","nodate","item-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9326,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324\/revisions\/9326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}