Northern Shrimp, Pandalus Borealis
Northern shrimp, Pandalus borealis Background Pandalus borealis is one of about 20 Pandalus species world-wide (Komai 1999). While officially known as the northern shrimp (Williams et al. 1989), it is also recognized under several other common names, including pink shrimp (Shumway et al. 1985), deep-sea shrimp (Ito 1976), as well as a prawn rather than shrimp. More local names, such as Maine shrimp (Czapp, 2005), also exist. Until recently it has been regarded as a widely ranging circumarctic species (Williams and Wigley 1977) that extends into northern Pacific and Atlantic regions, here referred to as P. borealis sensu lato. Western populations from the Bering Sea and further south in the Pacific can now be considered a separate species (Squires 1992) based on distinct traits of larvae and adults, here referred to as P. borealis sensu stricto. However, this change has not yet been universally adopted in the literature (Bergström 2000). Within the North Atlantic, P. borealis is known from northern Europe in the eastern Atlantic, and in the western Atlantic from Greenland to about 40ºN latitude (Squires, 1990), just south of the Gulf of Maine. The species is typically found at depths ranging from 10-500 m (Squires, 1990; Pohle, 1988), but is also known from deeper waters (Bergström 1992). Usually these schooling shrimp live on or near soft bottom with high organic content but do exhibit diurnal vertical migration (Shumway et al. 1985). They are found at temperatures ranging from 2 – 14ºC, but occurrences in areas below 0ºC are known (Squires 1968). In Atlantic waters, P. borealis is one of three recognized species of Pandalus that overlap geographically and bathymetrically, but is the only one amongst these with a major commercial fishery (Williams and Wigley 1977).
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