ABSTRACT
Populations of red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus; Tilesius, 1815) are widely distributed across the North Pacic from the Sea of Japan in the northwestern Pacic (Sato, 1958) to northern British Columbia in the northeastern Pacic (Butler and Hart, 1962) and through the Bering Sea into the Chukchi Sea (Feder et al., 2005). Despite the wide distribution, populations are largely restricted to cobble habitats and are absent on silt-laden bottoms. In Asian waters, concentrations of red king crab are found in several areas: the Primorye, Ayan-Shantar, South and North Kuril Islands, West Kamchatka, Karagin, and Hokkaido (Sherbakova et al., 2008). In Alaskan waters, large populations occur in Norton Sound, Bristol Bay, Aleutian Islands, western Gulf of Alaska (including Kodiak Island), and Southeast Alaska. See also Chapter 1, for a discussion of king crab species distributions.
