These Tiny Invasive Crabs are Eating All our WA Seafood

We get stories about invasive species every so often. These include pests or bugs or anything, really, not native to our area but have made the new area their home and, in turn, are destroying that area's ecosystem including plants, wildlife, native creatures and more.

And the European green crab, originally from Europe (obviously), have made Washington State their new home.

European green crabs are not new to the area. This was not an overnight ordeal.

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According to Kitsap Sun, green crabs were first discovered in Washington State during the late 1980s but within the last 5 years have grown in number exponentially.

These green crabs, like any invasive species, are wreaking havoc to our ecosystem, our wildlife, our shorelines, our commercial shellfish industry that not only is the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife getting involved but they're all teaming up with local area conservation districts, shellfish growers, and tribes. They're all teaming up to find a solution that helps everyone under these circumstances.

So far, they say trapping is best which has been working to some success.

You'd think they're crabs so you could just capture and eat them, which I'm sure many do, but these European green crabs aren't very big compared to a lot of other crabs we have here in the Pacific Northwest. They're about half the size of a baseball so not much you can do outside of using for stock or in a combination with other foods, but are edible.

In the meantime, they have a plan on doing all they can to rid our Pacific Northwest of these European green crab issue we're having in Washington State.