Discard mortality for the giant Pacific octopus in the Gulf of Alaska, 2014-15

This data set contains observations and measurements on the condition, weight, and survivorship of North Pacific giant octopus that were caught as bycatch in commercial fishing operations utilizing pot gear to target Pacific cod. The native file format is a Microsoft Office Access 2007 database containing the information from octopus samples. For archive, the Access database was converted to 4 CSV files, 2 TXT files, and 1 PDF file: nprb-1203-growth-data-table.csv, nprb-1203-mortality-data-table.csv, nprb-1203-raw-feeding-data-table.csv, nprb-1203-raw-weight-data-table.csv, nprb-1203-database-properties.txt, nprb-1203-data-dictionary.txt, and nprb-1203-database-relationships.pdf.

These octopus were captured during commercial fishing operations that occurred during three fishing seasons from January 2014 through February 2015. These commercial fishing operations occurred in the central Gulf of Alaska in either Shelikof Strait or Marmot Bay. Data collected included information on octopus condition, size, sex, and injury presence. Other data collected included the location of capture, water depth, octopus air exposure time, water temperature, and gear soak time.