Red King Crab

Fascinating facts about the Red King Crab

• Red king crabs can stretch a leg span to 1.8 m (5.9 ft), making them as wide as a small car, and weigh up to 12.7 kg (28 lb). Males average 2.9 kg (6.4 lb) in the Bering Sea, while most individuals now only reach a carapace width of about 17 cm (7 in). Their massive size fuels the highest market price per unit weight among king crabs, driving intense fisheries pressure that threatens their numbers.
• This crab tolerates water from -1.8 °C to 12.8 °C, but prefers the chilly 3.2-5.5 °C range. Immature crabs stay under 6 °C, then after two years they migrate to 20-50 m depths for massive podding events, while adults usually live deeper than 200 m on sand-mud bottoms. Their depth shifts for mating illustrate a life-stage-driven habitat use.
• Introduced by the Soviet Union in the 1960s, red king crabs have raced northward along Norway's coast at roughly 50 km (31 mi) per year, reaching the North Cape by the mid-1990s and breeding as far north as Sørøya by 2013. Their voracious feeding has been described as turning seabeds into "deserts," threatening local cod breeding grounds and prompting strict quota limits for the 259 Norwegian fishers allowed east of the North Cape.
• A single red king crab's hepatopancreas makes up about 90 % of its intestinal mass and 5-10 % of the animal's total weight, while the carapace accounts for roughly 60 % of processing waste. This waste, which can be 69 % of the catch mass, supplies valuable enzymes like collagenase and protease, turning what would be discard into a resource for various industries.
• Red king crabs have five gill sets housed in a bronchial chamber, and they pump water through a U-shaped flow: in through an opening near the chelipeds, over the gills, and out beside the head. This unidirectional ventilation, powered by the scaphognathite's back-and-forth strokes, maximizes oxygen uptake via hemocyanin, a copper-based pigment that turns blue when oxygenated.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Red King Crab

In the dark, icy waters of the Bering Sea, the Red King Crab reigns supreme, its burnished shell a deep, fiery hue that seems to glow like embers in the dim light. As it moves through the waves, its powerful claws snapping with a slow, deliberate rhythm, the crab exudes a sense of ancient, unyielding power, its very presence a testament to the unforgiving beauty of the underwater world. With each deliberate step, it claims its territory, a monarch of the deep, unchallenged and unyielding, its dominance a wonder to behold.

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