Morphometric criterion of sexual and functional maturity; forecasting of stocks and recruitment for snow crab <i>Chionoecetes opilio</i> in the southern part of the Primorye subarea

Stocks of large-hand and narrow-hand males of snow crab opilio are assessed separately for the first time on the data collected in the Primorye subarea southward from Cape Zolotoy (47°20’ N) in 2010-2013. Results of the separate assessment change fundamentally the conception of this exploited population recruitment. There is proposed to calculate the recruitment of its commercial stock from the number of narrow-hand males with commercial size instead of former method based on the number of pre-recruits size groups, that means that the large-hand males only are considered as commercial ones but the large-size narrow-hand males are their reserve. Dynamics of the size composition is analyzed and several options for calculation of the commercial stock recruitment after the final moult are proposed