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An annotated checklist of benthic fishes on the western part of Kitami-Yamato Bank off northeastern Hokkaido, Japan in the southern Sea of Okhotsk, is presented based on voucher specimens with accompanying color photographs. All material was collected in late April, 2013 and 2014 by the bottom trawl net, a total of 450 specimens being classified into 92 species representing 21 families. These include Bathyraja trachouros, the first record from the Sea of Okhotsk, and Careproctus segaliensis, only the second confirmed record of the species.

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Snow crab Chionoecetes opilio is among the most important species for the Danish seineˆshery in the western Sea of Japan. The caught males are divided into``kata-gani'' and``mizu-gani'' based on shell condition, which re‰ects the time elapsed since last molt. The former have a hard shell, indicating more than one year since last molt; the latter are postmolt (new and soft shell) males. The kata-gani are classiˆed into``tate-gani'' (adult, terminally molted males) and``momo-gani'' (adolescent, pubertally molted males). The occurrence rates of momo-gani and terminal molt are important in estimating male stock abundance. We investigated kata-gani and mizu-gani col-