Results of the 2022 eastern and northern Bering Sea continental shelf bottom trawl survey of groundfish and invertebrate fauna

In 2022, the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering (RACE) Division of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) conducted the 40th eastern Bering Sea (EBS) Crab/Groundfish Bottom Trawl Survey and 5th northern Bering Sea (NBS) Crab/Groundfish Bottom Trawl Survey. The survey covered the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf (bottom depths between approximately 20 and 200 m) from the Alaska mainland coast to the U.S.-Russia Maritime Boundary between the Alaska Peninsula and the Bering Strait. Survey sampling was conducted using two chartered commercial stern trawlers, the 43.9-m FV Alaska Knight and 37.8-m FV Vesteraalen. Demersal populations of fishes and invertebrates were sampled by trawling for 30 minutes at stations arranged on a systematic grid, which consisted of 376 total stations in the EBS and 144 total stations in the NBS. At each station, species composition, sex, length-frequency composition, and age structure samples were collected from ecologically and commercially important fish species.