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  Lisa Watkins, Washington Sea Grant

  August 5, 2025 1:50 pm

  Hi Laura, Thanks for continuing to take the time to do Molt Searches and for such helpful overhead images! It looks like you experienced the common frustration of finding so many more Dungeness molts than the reporting form allows you space for. The protocol step of randomly selecting only 10 Dungeness crab molts to measure was an intentional choice, but I know it’s a bummer to not get to capture them all in your submission! When designing the standardized protocols for these searches, we strategized on how to deliver the highest quality data to our research & management partners. In the end, the protocol we landed on gives researchers sufficient population size distribution information while also keeping the “ask” of data collectors quick enough to keep attention to detail high. We may tweak this down the line with more observations & feedback, but for now, I hope reassurance that this was a piece of the protocol that we did put time and thought into will be helpful to know. While we assume each report submission to be the equivalent of 20minutes of search effort (split among 1-4 people), adding descriptive comments like you’ve done is perfect for helping us understand and interpret how to compile and fully use the data you’ve shared. You’re always welcome to add additional measurements into the comments field for our Dungeness research partners to access, as well. Thanks so much for being part of this important effort! -Lisa

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