Abstract
This paper is to study population ecological characteristics, including growth parameters, survival rate, instantaneous coefficients of natural and fishing mortalities, and age at first capture of the soft-shelled clam, Mya japonioa in the intertidal zone of South Sea in Korea. For describing growth of the clam a von Bertalanffy growth model was adopted, The von Bertalanffy growth curve had an additive error structure and the growth parameters estimated from a non-linear regression were SH/sub ∞/=79.83mm, K=0.26, and t/sub 0/= -0.01. Survival rate (S) of the soft-shelled clam was 0.26 (SD=0.02). The instantaneous coefficients of natural mortality (M) was estimated to be 0.78/year and fishing mortality (F) 0.57/year for the soft-shelled clam. The age at first capture (t/sub c/) was estimated as 2.69 year. The mean densities of the soft-shelled clam by bottom type were 3.40 inds./m²(SE=0.18) in the sand, 63.4 inds./m²(SE= 0.53) in the muddy sand, and 0 inds./m2 (SE=0) in the gravelly sand. The mean densities of the soft-shelled clam by 3 different areas were 4.88 inds./m²(SE=0.09), 2.61 inds./m²(SE=0.13), 7.20 inds./m²(SE=0.18), respectively and the biomass of the clam were estimated as 131mt, 121mt, 665mt, respectively. An yield-per-recruit analysis showed that the current yield-per-recruit of about 8.30g with F=0.57/year and the age at first capture (t/sub c/) 2.69 year, was lower than the maximum possible yield-per-recruit of 9.60g. Fixing to at the current level and increased fishing intensity (F) could produce an increase in the predicted yield-per-recruit from 8.30g to about 9.40. However, estimated yield-per-recruit increased to 1.30g by decreasing to from the current age (2.69 year) to age two with F fixed at the current level. Yield-per-recruit was estimated under harvest strategies based on F/sub max/ and F/sub 0.1/.
