By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
Despite new state regulations allowing a tripling of the number of European green crabs that can be caught, the invasive specie isn’t likely to be eliminated anytime soon from Oregon’s coastal marshes, bays and inlets.
Unless, that is, the type of cooler ocean waters more prevalent before about 2015 return.
“I’m actually pretty hopeful that will be the case,” said Mitch Vance, shell project leader for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Newport. “But, clearly, the future remains to be seen.”
Given the unpredictability of ocean temperatures, however, the state is doing what it can now to deal with a habitat-destroying species first detected in Oregon in the early 1990s.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has increased the daily bag limit for European green crab from 10 to 35. Commissioners, noting that green crabs both compete with native crabs for food and are known to eat smaller native shellfish, explained that the move gives recreational shellfishers “an opportunity to help native shellfish by taking more of these invaders home.”
Commercial harvest of green crabs has long been prohibited in the state.
Green crabs, while smaller than their Dungeness counterparts, are nonetheless fine to eat. Several cookbooks, in fact, have been published that contain green crab-specific recipes.
Still, Vance and others say they are not proponents of unlimited harvest, primarily because green crabs, despite their colorful name, display a wide variety of hues when they come out of the water.
“Sometimes, well intentioned people might want to save Oregon’s ecosystem by smashing green crabs,” he said. “The problem is, some of those that appear to be green crabs could be native shore crabs or juvenile Dungeness.”
Finally, the increased daily limit also was intended to help recreational crabbers who discovered they had just violated the previous limit of 10 green crabs by hauling in an 11th. Since green crabs are a controlled species, it is illegal to return them to the water.
“Before, if someone got 11, they’d be in a quandary,” Vance said. “The rule change helps ease that situation.”