Since time immemorial, humans have been consuming food derived from the land, air and water. From vegetables and birds to even crabs, there is not much we have not used to survive on. But currently, people in New England are feasting on green crabs not to survive themselves but to help the native species subsist. Every morning in Maine’s York River, fishers look for the region’s most despised crabs and find few that end up on someone’s plate, according to a report by AP.The trick is to identify invasive European green crabs that are about to shed their hard shell or moult, revealing a softer exterior that has the feel of a leather couch and is in demand at restaurants. Not only do these crabs fetch more money, $3 per crab at the market, but catching them is also doing a service for the ocean’s ecosystem. “Just about everyone hates them, and we’re trying to turn them into a premium seafood product,” said Mike Masi, whose company, shell+claw, is the only one that commercially cultivates these crabs.Masi, a 45-year-old former marine science teacher is a part of the growing movement across New England aiming to lessen the crabs’ destructive impact by developing new markets. Others are putting green crabs in pet treats, fish sauce and even a line of green crab whiskey in New Hampshire.
An invasive species
The green crabs, Carcinus maenus, made their way from Europe to the East Coast on ships centuries ago. Now numbering in tens of millions, they outcompete Atlantic rock crab and juvenile lobster, destroy eelgrass beds and undermine salt marsh banks. They also are costing the region’s shellfish industry tens of millions of dollars each year, as they eat mussels, oysters and soft-shell clams.Chad Coffin, a clam fisherman from Maine, blamed the emergence of green crabs for the decline of his catch. Soft-shell clam landings have gone from over 7.8 million meat pounds (3.6 million kilograms) in 1978 to 1.3 million pounds (572,644 kilograms) in 2025, according to the state.
Climate change on their side
Green crabs are known for their brown or green shells and five spines on either side of their eyes. The warming of the ocean waters due to global warming and climate change has been helpful for their population. The crabs are able to survive New England winters while also thriving in a range of diverse habitats. They eat almost anything and produce plenty of young; a female will release up to 185,000 eggs once or twice a year.These traits have made them among the world’s most successful invasive species, expanding along the West Coast and into Alaska and reaching South Africa, Japan, Argentina and Australia.“They’re really pretty resilient little guys,” said Carolyn Tepolt, an evolutionary biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has studied green crabs for two decades and uses them to understand why some species thrive in different environments.
Crab fisheries on the rise?
For the past decade, the region’s campaign to combat the crab invasion has been limited to the grassroots, causing not much impact on their numbers. While a growing number of restaurants and seafood businesses are now offering green crabs, very few New England fishermen are catching them, and there is almost no infrastructure to process the catch and get them to market.Marissa McMahan, vice president of fisheries at Manomet Conservation Sciences, says that people in Washington County, Maine, on the Canadian border, tell her they can catch “as many green crabs as you could ever possibly want.” “But they can’t get them on a truck and get them to where they need to actually be, and often that’s Boston or New Bedford or New York City,” she said. “That is a huge impediment.”Certain steps have been taken in the right direction. Rhode Island passed a law that offers a green crab fishing license for just $10, Connecticut now allows crabs to be sold as food and Maine has made it easier to get the crabs to the market.The problem, many advocates say, is the absence of significant government support in New England. Only Massachusetts offers incentives to catch them: Fishermen receive 40 cents per pound on top of what they get selling them, or just over $100,000 per year in state funding. The state program operates in 10 communities on the North Shore and outer Cape Cod.Meanwhile, Washington state declared an emergency in 2022 and expects to spend more than $38 million in state and federal funds through fiscal year 2027 eradicating the crabs. So far this year, nearly 2 million crabs have been caught and mostly converted into 135,000 pounds (61,234 kilograms) of waste that goes to an organic fertiliser company. The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe and Lummi Nation also catch crabs and use them as compost.
Green crab on the menu
According to the report by AP, there is a rising appetite for green crabs in New England. Since 2021, advocates have observed a more than 10-fold increase in restaurants offering crab. Some are putting fried green crab in sandwiches, on top of pasta dishes and in their sauces. Many take part in green crab weeks that happen during the roughly two-month softshell season. PAGU, a Spanish Japanese tapas restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, puts the crustaceans into the broth of its green crab laksa, a Malaysian-inspired noodle soup, and, when available, puts a tempura-fried soft-shell green crab inside a steamed bun called bao. “These crabs are way more potent in terms of flavour,” said PAGU’s chef and owner Tracy Chang.The industrial-scale green crabbing is a long way off, according to Masi. While his business has grown since he began five years ago, he says it still feels like a hobby that brings in up to $20,000 annually. Yet he remains “cautiously optimistic” about the potential of this business. And the hope might be right as long as people keep on loving the flavours of the green crabs along with their health benefits.