The effect of white and green LED-lights on the catch efficiency of the Barents Sea snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) pot fishery

Kristine Cerbule; Bent Herrmann; Eduardo Grimaldo; Leif Grimsmo; Jørgen Vollstad

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258272

The effect of white and green LED-lights on the catch efficiency of the Barents Sea snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) pot fishery

PLoS One. 2021 Oct 5;16(10):e0258272. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258272. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Kristine Cerbule¹, Bent Herrmann^{1

2

3}, Eduardo Grimaldo^{1

2}, Leif Grimsmo¹, Jørgen Vollstad¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Fisheries Technology, SINTEF Ocean, Trondheim, Norway.
² UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
³ DTU Aqua, Denmark Technical University, Hirtshals, Denmark.

Abstract

In commercial snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) fishery, the catch efficiency of the conical pots is important for increasing the profitability of the industry. This study evaluated the effect of adding green and white light emitting diodes (LED) on the catch efficiency of commercially used conical pots. The results from the field experiments showed that inserting artificial lights significantly increases the catch efficiency for snow crab over the minimum landing size of 95 mm carapace width of up to 76% when using green LED, and by 52-53% on average when using white LED. This study shows that it is possible to improve the catch efficiency of the snow crab fishery by applying artificial LED lights to the conical snow crab pots, potentially resulting in an important economic benefit to the snow crab fishery.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Brachyura / physiology*
Databases as Topic
Fisheries*
Light*
Statistics as Topic

Grants and funding

This study was part of the project "CRABPOT", which is funded Opilio AS, Egersund Trawl AS, the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 269251/O80), the Directorate of Fisheries in Norway (grant no. 17/17063). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. SINTEF Ocean provided support in the form of salaries for all the authors but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.