Chionoecetes opilio

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Snow crab ( Chionoecetes opilio )

The snow crab ( Chionoecetes opilio ), which is also called snow crab, Nordic Arctic Sea crab or snow crab, is a predominantly live in the unconsolidated sediments of the continental shelf of cancer that occurs mainly in the northwestern Atlantic and North Pacific Ocean.

Snow crab are caught by means of reuse -like fish traps or trawling. In the food trade them among the crustaceans. The male crabs are significantly larger than females and are most commonly caught from all around Canada and Newfoundland.

Features

The top of the snow crab has a reddish to brownish, the underside of a whitish- yellow color. The carapace is hard, almost as wide as long with a short rostrum. The carapace width (CW) of males can reach up to 150 mm, the females up to 90 mm. The first three legs are substantially longer than the claws. The color of the eyes ranges from green to green- blue.

There are significant Geschlechtsdimorphismen:

• The male crabs are significantly larger and heavy ( up to 150 mm carapace, leg span of up to 90cm, weight up to 1.35 kg) than female ( carapace up to 90 mm, leg span of up to 38cm, weight up to 0.5 kg)
• In the males, the abdomen is triangular shaped while it has a more rounded shape in the female animals.

Dissemination

The distribution of snow crab occupies the western Atlantic from Greenland over Newfoundland to the Gulf of Maine and the North Pacific from the Arctic Alaska west to northern Siberia and south through the Bering Strait to the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, Okhotsk, Japan and Korea.