If you can’t beat them, eat them.
That’s become a slogan of sorts for the New England seafood industry and some of the fishermen who supply them, as they try to eradicate – or at least control – the population of one of the world’s most invasive species: the green crab.
These pesky creatures offer little meat but have a voracious appetite of their own, wreaking havoc on the shellfish industry and the ecosystem.
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“They’re omnivores, so they eat everything, including a lot of our really important species and commercial species, like soft-shell clam,” Adrienne Pappal, habitat and water quality program manager for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, told Fox News Digital.
Green crabs have been in New England since the mid-to-late 1980s, making their way from Europe and West Africa via cargo ships.
The crabs have broad environmental tolerances, Pappal said, so they can live anywhere from intertidal to subtidal areas, from 30 to 100 feet.
“They have a lot of ways to survive, and that’s why they’ve been really successful,” said Pappal. “They are so widespread in the environment and can have a lot of different impacts.”
Green crabs are hard on the shellfish industry in Massachusetts, according to Story Reed, deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF).
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“On the North Shore, there are five towns that have done eradication programs that have been mostly funded through the state to pay fishermen to go out and try to eradicate these things,” Reed told Fox News Digital.
“We’ve recently heard from towns in the Cape Cod area who are also interested in eradication programs because they’re seeing impacts to their shellfish as well.”
Fisherman Jamie Bassett, of Chatham, Massachusetts, said he’s seen that firsthand.
“We have an issue with green crab,” he told Fox News Digital.
“A gravid female – gravid meaning egg-bearing – can, I believe, disperse up to 180,000 eggs into the water.”
“We have an issue with green crab.”
Bassett said he frequently encounters hundreds of gravid females.
“The issue of green crab as an invasive species is not going to go away,” he said.
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“One, because they reproduce so much. And two, because it’s just not a sought-after species.”
Finding a market for green crabs is a challenge, he said.
“How many pounds of green crabs is a restaurant going to order from one of the seafood wholesalers in Boston?” he said.
“They’re not too edible. It’s not like you can pick through them like a lobster. You’ll die of old age before you pick through a green crab for a thimble of it.”
But Sharon St. Ours, whose family has been in the seafood business for 45 years, is hoping to change that.
“As it turns out, they’re ‘really delicious.'”
“When I learned how they were devastating the oyster population because of their numbers, I turned to my dad and said, ‘We can do something about this problem,'” St. Ours told Fox News Digital. “We got some crabs and cooked them.”
As it turns out, they’re “really delicious,” she said.
“Their broth is a lot sweeter than any other crabs that I’ve used to make shellfish broth. It’s a lot sweeter than lobster broth.”
St. Ours & Company officially debuted its crab broth powder, after three years in the making, at the Seafood Expo North America trade show in March. It was named a finalist in the food service category.
“It’s not profitable yet and I have more to sell,” she said.
“But I do have a lot of interest in it.”
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The broth was partially funded by the DMF’s seafood marketing program.
“It was really neat to see it get that recognition at an international show and get to taste it,” Reed said.
“I think it’s the creativity, the willingness to try new species, both from [the] consumer’s perspective and from chefs in the culinary world. It’s great that people are trying these different things.”
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