Seafood industry looks to capitalize on New England's invasive green crab
Duxbury, Massachusetts — Jeff Ladd grew up fishing the marshes of Duxbury, Massachusetts, with his father and grandfather.
But just below the surface, the iconic New England fishery is changing fast, as warming waters reshape the ecosystem.
Among those changes is the proliferation of green crab, a troublesome import from Europe and one of the world's most invasive species.
"They're like cockroaches of the sea, basically," Ladd told CBS News. "You can't kill these things. I mean, we've heard stories of them coming back from a frozen state and crawling around restaurants."
With few natural predators off the mainland U.S. and Alaska, cold winter water was the only thing keeping their population in check.
But climate change is altering that equation, especially in places like New England where coastal waters are warming faster
than almost anywhere on earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, especially in winter, fueling a green crab boom.
"There's millions of green crab here in the bay, so it's had an impact on the clamming industry," Ladd said of Duxbury Bay.
These crabs are voracious. They devour native crabs, clams and even young lobsters. So, Ladd is doing what most never imagined — fishing for a species no one wanted.
One April day, his haul consisted of two 50-pound bags of green crab. He explains that it's a pretty good haul so early in the season. During peak season, he can catch about 2,000 pounds per day.
A big question though is whether the public can ben convinced to eat them.
"The idea here is to get some restaurants to use it, or some food manufacturing companies to use it as a flavoring in order to utilize a lot of them, and then and bring more money to the fisheries," said Sharon St. Ours, whose family has been in the seafood industry since 1979 through St. Ours & Company, which makes seafood broths.
After seeing the damage green crabs were doing, she wanted to find a way to make them useful.
"I thought, well, we already make a seafood broth powder, I wonder if it would make a good seafood broth," St. Ours said.
Last year, she turned 5,000 pounds of crab into 1,000 gallons of broth, which was sold to commercial kitchens.
She believes that with a little awareness, and a few taste tests, demand could start to boil over.
"It definitely has a delicious flavor, and I hope people don't think of it as something that, you know, they'll try on a dare," St. Ours said.
If demand grows, Ladd and St. Ours say prices might follow, creating incentives to fish more and ease pressure on the local ecosystem.
With how quickly a green crab can reproduce, over 185,000 eggs a year, there's plenty of crabs to catch.
Says Ladd: "Every one that you take out has the potential to prevent 185,000 of these things from either being in Duxbury Bay, or going out with a tide to another community."
