Saving Seafood

Record number of invasive green crab found on Annette Island, potential impacts to subsistence fishing

November 13, 2025 — It was the first sunny morning in days, and two scientists donned in Xtratuf boots carefully strolled along a rocky, grassy shoreline. They were at Settlers Cove on the north end of the Tongass Highway. The duo are no strangers to flipping rocks and looking into puddles for carapaces, or crab shells.

Before long, they located the exoskeleton of a Dungeness crab, which is indigenous to Southeast and much of the West Coast. The find is somewhat of a relief to the group, who didn’t spot any invasive European green crabs that day.

But that isn’t always the case. Shells and live crabs were spotted to the north in Ketchikan this summer, and they’ve since been found on eight other beaches along the road system.

Read the full article at KRBD

One of Long Island Sound’s most invasive species is appearing on dinner menus. Here’s why and where

October 8, 2025 — The European green crab, commonly found in the Long Island Sound, is becoming a beloved culinary dish known for its sweet, rich and complex flavor.

But unlike other types of standard seafood fare found on menus in Connecticut, the green crab is considered one of the “world’s most invasive species” to inhabit the icy waters off New England. The crab is believed to have come to the eastern Atlantic from western European waters over 200 years ago and is known for causing ecological harm as a voracious predator, consuming up to 40 half-inch soft-shell clams in a single day and eating a variety of shellfish including scallops, mussels and oysters.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, green crabs are considered one of the most invasive species in the marine environment because they have very few predators, aggressively hunt and eat their prey, destroy seagrass and outcompete local species for food and habitat. The crab is now found from Maine all the way down to Delaware, according to the NOAA.

Read the full article at Hartford Courant

Invasive Crabs Have Taken Over New England. One Solution? Eat Them.

January 31, 2025 — For several years while teaching at the University of Vermont, Joe Roman, a conservation biologist, challenged students to an unusual exercise. Design an animal ideal for the role of marine invader, he’d say, a creature with the natural traits to colonize a territory not its own and, in the relentlessly competitive scrum of the wild, establish itself sturdily for the long term. Roman has spent decades studying how species travel the globe, multiply beyond pioneering toeholds to something like ubiquity and change ecosystems. His classroom exercise invariably landed as a living example on one little-known but astonishingly widespread member of the animal kingdom: the European green crab. Small, fertile, rugged and fueled by an expansive appetite, the species, he says, is “an exemplary invader, a perfect invader.”

European green crabs originally hail from the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and the southwestern Baltic Sea. Roman ticked off traits that helped them conquer much of the world. As omnivores, scavengers and cannibals, they sustain themselves on almost any organic food. They have a high fecundity, with females releasing as many as 185,000 eggs a year. They survive in water temperatures from freezing to 86 degrees Fahrenheit and tolerate sweetwater zones where salt meets fresh. Moreover, adult European green crabs can live 10 days or more out of water. Taken together, these characteristics explain why they were first documented along the United States coast in 1817 and continue their tour of the temperate world.

My curiosity about European green crabs began after witnessing their near indestructibility beside my own home. Our family fishes commercially in New England, where we grow or catch a substantial portion of our food. About 15 years ago, my children and I began capturing bushels of European green crabs for use as fertilizer. The process was simple. We harvested crabs in baited wire-mesh traps in an estuary in southern Rhode Island. Every so often we’d transfer bushels into coolers of tap water, where we expected they would die, as lobsters quickly do when immersed in fresh water. We’d then dump their limp carcasses into compost piles and cover them under a foot of decomposing leaves, vegetable scraps and manure.

Read the full article at The New York Times

ALASKA: A statewide task force is trying to stop the spread of highly invasive green crabs in Southeast Alaska — and they need your help

November 20, 2024 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls European green crabs one of the most invasive marine species in the world. They are widely blamed for the collapse of the softshell clam industry on the East Coast. Now, the species has been wreaking havoc up the west coast of North America.

“We’re kind of on the front lines with the invasion here,” said Ian Hudson. Hudson coordinates the Metlakatla Indian Community’s green crab program.

Metlakatla is the southernmost community in Southeast Alaska. Locals there had been worried about green crabs for years. The tiny, invasive crabs were first found in San Francisco in 1989 and have been marching north ever since. States like Oregon and Washington have spent millions of dollars trying to protect their lucrative shellfish industries but still, green crab populations there are booming.

Read the full article at KRBD

ALASKA: Invasive green crabs reach Alaska, threatening fisheries

November 7, 2024 — The invasive European Green Crabs that have wreaked havoc on clam fisheries in Maine and the West Coast have now reached Alaska, where they could threaten subsistence, personal use, and commercial fisheries, including salmon.

“I worry about the salmonids,” says Tammy Davis, Invasive Species Program coordinator at the Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game (ADF&G). “I don’t have any evidence that they are competing for food at certain life stages, but the green crabs tear up the eelgrass that provides vital habitat for juvenile salmon and their prey, and in an already stressed ecosystem, having another stressor can affect the whole food web.”

So far, the green crabs are far less abundant than they are in Washington State, but Davis notes that Southeast Alaska has the kind of real estate green crabs like. “In Southeast Alaska, we have an estimated 19,000 miles of coastline and much of it is suitable habitat for green crabs.” She adds that many of the islands and passages of the Southeast archipelago have estuaries with eelgrass meadows protected from heavy surf, providing food and protection for green crabs.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Why a Single Crab Has West Coast Researchers Worried

September 8, 2016 — Invasive European green crabs have been swarming up and down both coasts, but because of the flow of ocean currents around the Pacific Northwest, inland waters of BC and Washington State were thought to be relatively safe. Well, on Sept. 2, volunteers announced they’d recently caught a single crab on San Juan Island, in Puget Sound. Although it’s just one for now—and it could have hitched a ride on someone’s fishing gear, or another way—it’s the first confirmed sighting in these inland waters.

Starting next week, a “rapid response team” will be out laying traps and trying to figure out if there are more crabs out there. The aliens pose a threat to the region’s native species.

“I’ll admit, I have a lot of respect for these crabs,” Sean McDonald, a research scientist at the University of Washington, told me. McDonald works with the Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team, a network of citizen scientists that serves as an early alert for the crustacean’s encroachment. They caught the crab, and will be organizing next week’s response. “They’re tough and resilient,” he continued. “They make a living anywhere they can.”

Read the full story at Motherboard