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Physiological stress responses in the edible crab, Cancer pagurus, to the fishery practice of de-clawing

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Abstract

We examined physiological stress responses in the edible crab, Cancer pagurus, subjected to the commercial fishery practice of manual de-clawing. We measured haemolymph glucose and lactate, plus muscular glycogen and glycogen mobilisation, in three experiments where the crabs had one claw removed. In the first, crabs showed physiological stress responses when ‘de-clawed’ as compared to ‘handled only’ over the short term of 1–10 min. In the second, de-clawing and the presence of a conspecific both increased the physiological stress responses over the longer term of 24 h. In the third, de-clawing was shown to be more stressful than ‘induced autotomy’ of claws. Further, the former practice caused larger wounds to the body and significantly higher mortality than the latter. Since the fishery practice is to remove both claws, the stress response observed and mortality data reported are conservative.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financed by a Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) PhD studentship to LP. The authors would like to extend sincere thanks to Grant Stentiford and Mark Briffa for their advice with the physiological assays and Philip Johnston for his technical assistance whilst field working.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, Medical Biology Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, 97 Lisburn Road, BT9 7BL, Belfast, N. Ireland, UK

    Lynsey Patterson, Jaimie T. A. Dick & Robert W. Elwood

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  1. Lynsey Patterson
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  2. Jaimie T. A. Dick
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  3. Robert W. Elwood
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Correspondence to Lynsey Patterson.

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Communicated by A. Atkinson.

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Patterson, L., Dick, J.T.A. & Elwood, R.W. Physiological stress responses in the edible crab, Cancer pagurus, to the fishery practice of de-clawing. Mar Biol 152, 265–272 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-007-0681-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-007-0681-5

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