A Coast-Wide Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Dngeness Crab (Cancer magister)

Dungeness crab Cancer magister has been a species of interest to commercial fishermen along the west coast of North America since the mid-1800s. Today, Dungeness crab is the most economically important species harvested in the California Current system, yet there is a limited understanding of recruitment dynamics. Dungeness crab undergo a lengthy pelagic larval duration and are traditionally thought to be a part of a single widely dispersing, panmictic population, which is managed separately by states. However, physical oceanographic processes, larval behavior, and post-settlement survival are likely to influence realized dispersal scale and genetic diversity. This paper details the first year of an ongoing study investigating inter-annual variation in genetic diversity and connectivity of Dungeness crab in Washington, Oregon, and California. We sampled individuals along 33 latitudinal transects spanning nearly 2000 km of their range in 2012 and 2014, and genotyped them at ten microsatellite loci. Results of this research will help improve our knowledge of Dungeness crab population connectivity, and will inform management of the fishery as well as marine spatial planning in the California Current system.