Saving Seafood

The Unexpected Tastiness of the Green Crab

August 10, 2017 — Maine’s problem with the invasive European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is not a new one, nor is the idea of finding a commercial use for them. It’s been a tough go for a long time; mostly because it has not been easy to find a market that will pay enough to make it worthwhile for a fisherman to gear up and fish a gang of traps. Recently though, there is a push to make green crabs attractive as a menu item, and I am glad to write that that there is a beam of light sneaking in through that cloudy scenario. The reason? Green crabs can be downright delicious.

To be more specific, we’re talking about soft-shelled green crab, similar to what you’d find with blue crabs down in the mid-Atlantic. Work led by Marissa McMahan, a Georgetown, Maine native and a PhD. candidate at Northeastern University, has taken this product further than anyone else in the state. Since she comes from a fishing family, her scientific and industry connections have been helpful, and the results to date have been quite tasty.

Her own introduction into the topic came courtesy of Jonathan Taggart, also a Georgetown citizen. He discovered fried green crabs at a restaurant in Venice, Italy, and brought the idea to Marissa. Venice is the center of the Italian soft-shell crab trade, and they have a very closely-related species of green crab, Carcinus estuarii. A key in the Italian industry is that Venetian fishermen have identified visible indicators that precede shedding – a fisherman can look at an individual crab and know to a fine degree how soon that crab will molt. This key step has been known for blue crabs in the U.S. for many years, but is only now being understood for green crabs.

Read the full story at NOAA Sea Grant

MAINE: Invasive green crabs are scuttling from dilemma to delicacy

August 15, 2016 — A marine biologist, an art conservator and a group of fishermen from Georgetown are trying to use traditional Venetian fishing methods to turn the invasive green crab into a gourmet dish known in Italy as moleche.

Moleche is the name of the young, soft-shelled Venetian crabs that are caught, sorted and held in floating cages and harvested daily, right after they shed their hard outer shell. They are dipped in milk or egg, floured and fried, served up six or eight at a time for about two dozen euro in upscale eateries across the Veneto region of Italy.

Their nearly identical American cousins are reviled in Maine for decimating clam flats and threatening the state’s $23 million industry, as well as preying on other mollusks such as mussels and scallops. They can be caught with nets or traps, including the shrimp traps that now lie fallow here in Maine.

The real art of the moleche (moe-le-che) fishery, however, is about spotting the subtle signs of a molt about to happen in time to catch them before they hide or are eaten by a predator, including their fellow crabs.

Scientists at the University of Maine at Machias had studied the moleche possibility of the green crabs once before, and concluded the crabs did not give any external clues to their molts and thus could not be harvested commercially. But as the invasion marched on, and efforts to eradicate the crab failed, scientists on Prince Edward Island decided to give it a second look. So did marine biologist Marissa McMahan, a Northeastern University Ph.D. candidate from a Georgetown lobstering family who lives in Phippsburg.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine fishermen testing a ‘game-changer’ for protected cod

July 25, 2016 — GEORGETOWN, Maine — Like many Maine fishermen, Bryan Kelley faces a dilemma as he looks to diversify beyond the lobster that account for the bulk of his catch.

To target pollock, which are relatively common in the Gulf of Maine, he has to fish in the same areas frequented by cod, a type of groundfish protected through strict federal catch limits.

“We literally have to stay away from the codfish,” Kelley said while standing on his 40-foot boat moored in the Five Islands harbor of Georgetown. “I could fill this with codfish if I wanted to, but that wouldn’t help anybody in this sector and that is not why we are out here.”

To help him catch the groundfish he wants and avoid the species he doesn’t, Kelley has begun experimenting with a contraption akin to a conventional fishing reel on steroids and with an electronic brain. The “automatic jigging machines” loaned to Kelley and a handful of other fishermen by The Nature Conservancy allow them to more accurately target the water column where pollock hang out and stay off the bottom where cod lurk. The machines’ simple hooks and lures also ostensibly reduce inadvertent “by-catch” of cod while avoiding other downsides of trawlnets and gill nets more commonly used by fishermen.

“That’s part of the draw of it: It’s the quickest and easiest I have ever rigged anything up in my life,” Kelley said.

Geoff Smith, marine program director at the Maine chapter of the The Nature Conservancy, said preliminary reviews of the machines have been largely positive.

“This project is really about helping fishermen target those healthy stocks (of fish) while avoiding the codfish to allow them to rebuild,” said Smith, whose organization owns several groundfish permits in the Gulf of Maine. “We really feel that these jigging machines, if fished properly, can be selective and have minimal impact on the seafloor. … And if they work for fishermen, we think they could be a real game-changer.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald