If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em! Invasive Green Crabs Are Coming to a Menu Near You [Podcast]

Further Reading

NH Green Crab Project

GreenCrab.org

Brian Yurasits: [00:00:00] If green crabs were to have a superpower like similar to Spider-Man, if you were pinched by a green crab and turned into crab woman, what would, what superpower would the green crab transfer over to yourself

Gabriela Bradt: Crabby Gabby, the superwoman, uh, super crab. One of the things that I say is that they're an awesome invader 'cause they have this broad range of adaptability, right?
So they can tolerate really high temperatures, really low temperatures, low salinity, high salinity. But what I, I don't think a lot of people realize is that green crabs can actually survive out of water for days and days, weeks and weeks at a time based on having them reserve little droplets of water in their gills and they can extract little bits of oxygen and stuff as needed. If I can survive in not my element, with just a tiny bit of oxygen, we're good.

Brian Yurasits: So you, [00:01:00] you would be the master of both land and sea?

Gabriela Bradt: I would, yeah. 

Brian Yurasits: And you'd get to travel. To travel and see the world 

Gabriela Bradt: Totally.

Brian Yurasits: 200 years ago, that's the early 18 hundreds, a small species of crab stowed away aboard the ballast of ships traveling from Europe to the East coast of the United States. Since then, European green crabs have firmly establish themselves from the Mid-Atlantic to Canada's Prince Edward Island as a menace to local ecosystems.
Through time, this invasion has come with a heavy economic and ecological cost, as we'll find out today on time and tide, green crabs are inherently designed to be one of the [00:02:00] most successful invasive species in the marine environment, and this has led to a serious impact on shellfish, sea grasses and other local species that they outcompete and consume.

Currently, green crabs are considered an invasive species on four continents with the potential to expand their range even further in the future. Today we'll be exploring the impact of green crabs on the Gulf of Maine and some extremely creative ways that researchers are working with the seafood industry to try and eat
our way towards a solution. Oh, and drink. There's a whiskey made from green crabs that we'll be tasting. I mean, discussing in New England, controlling green crab populations has the potential to bring new economic opportunity to fishers, especially through an emerging soft shell green crab fishery.

Nobody knows this better than our very own Dr. Gabriela Bradt who started the New Hampshire Green Crab Project, which has been working to address this issue for the past 10 years. [00:03:00] In Act one, Gabby distills 200 years of green crab history discusses how a green crab whiskey turned invasive species into a dinner table topic and explains why soft shell green crabs are such a sustainable source of seafood.

In Act two, Mary Parks, the founder and executive director of green crab.org takes a seat at the table with us to discuss how green crabs are making their way to a restaurant near you. I'm your host, Brian Yurasits, and on today's episode of Time and Tide, I'll be joined by my co-host Erik Chapman, as we discuss in great detail the flavor profile of the hottest food item on the Seacoast, Green Crabs.
Stay with us.

My first question for you is, is what would you say the odds are that if you flip over a rock at low tide in any area of New Hampshire, [00:04:00] whether it's Great Bay or the coast, that you might encounter a green crab? 

Gabriela Bradt: I would say it'd be about a hundred percent, but not anywhere in New Hampshire. Okay. Because they are strictly coastal and estuarine species.
You're not gonna find them in Winnipesaukee. So, 

Brian Yurasits: Yep. 

Gabriela Bradt: Just to clarify.

Brian Yurasits: Before we dive into your work, I'm curious if you could tell our listeners a little bit about the history of green crabs or even describe what they look like. 

Gabriela Bradt: An adult sized green crab is about three inches across its shell. You know, that's the average size that most people encounter, and if you look at them carefully, they're kind of a brown green on top and on the bottom they are not green.

They can be yellow, they can be slightly green, they can be very dark red, orange. So they're really very colorful. They're not just green green. But you can always tell it's a green crab because on either side of its eyes, it has five teeth or spines, and [00:05:00] it can spell green on either side. Count them, and they're more of a pentagonal shape than most other crabs. 

Most other crabs are more oval and they have a lot more of those little teeth and scallops, if you will, all around the front part of their shell. And they are not swimming crabs, so they don't have those flattened, um, swimmer legs, swimmerets. Mm-hmm. Like blue crabs might. Like blue crabs. Yeah.

Erik Chapman: And did you say, so there's a tooth for every letter in the word green?

Gabriela Bradt: Yes.

Erik Chapman: Okay. That helps.

Gabriela Bradt: And then in the middle of their face they have three, three bumps.

Erik Chapman: Gotcha.

Gabriela Bradt: So if you're ever confused, you know, grab 'em. Even the small ones, you can still count the spines on either side of their eyes. 

Brian Yurasits: So thanks for the ID. So now, now we know what we're looking for, but what is the history of green crabs?
I know that they're an invasive species. I'm curious if you could speak to what that means. 

Gabriela Bradt: Well, they are native to Europe and Northern Africa and the Mediterranean. So, at least in terms of them coming here to [00:06:00] the Americas, this was over 200 years ago, and that's when shipping across the Atlantic began.
So like a lot of our invasive species, aquatic invasive species, they come as larvae or juveniles in ballast water and ballast water is what keeps boats upright for the most part as they cross the Atlantic. And then when they get to their port, they dump that water and whatever was in that icky water either dies or like our little green crabs decided this would be a really fun home.

Native species are species that were already here in these environments and these ecosystems. So our native crab species in New Hampshire. Are things like rock crabs, jonah crabs, spider crabs, and so on. An invasive species is anything that gets transplanted from a different continent, for example. So from Europe to the Americas. The issue with having invasive species and especially with green crabs, is the environments that they [00:07:00] come into aren't used to them. So natural defenses aren't there, natural predators aren't there, and if the temperature is great, I can eat and reproduce ad nauseum, right? And nobody will eat me and nobody will push me out of my new home. And so the native species either get pushed away, so they're no longer in those ecosystems, or they're all competing for the same resources and they get, they lose that competition. 

Erik Chapman: It sounds like they create sort of an ecological loophole in a way. By coming in and then suddenly they don't have predators, they've got food , they've got everything they need. So there's an ecological kind of opportunity.
Yeah. 

Gabriela Bradt: Yeah, and that's it. They're opportunists, right. 

Brian Yurasits: You mentioned that European green crabs have been here for 200 years. What has happened in those 200 years? Have they expanded even farther, uh, their reach and, and their population size? Also, what makes them such good invaders? I know we spoke about a little bit about this in the beginning of the episode around superpowers.
Are there any other superpowers that we didn't [00:08:00] hit on? 

Gabriela Bradt: They have expanded. So the first recorded sighting or record of a green crab in Cape Cod was in 1817. So they've been here for a while. Since that time, we have seen changes in our ecology, our ecosystems, um, more and more people, warmer water. As those parameters have changed and become even more optimal for an invasive species like green crabs, they really do take over.

They take hold because like I said earlier, no predators, nobody to really disturb what they wanna do and conditions are even better. Southernmost range would be maybe Delaware, from Delaware, and they go all the way up to the Canadian provinces. So Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, all you know over there.

And then the other thing too is they have also hybridized with another green crab from Northern Europe and Scandinavia. And so the ones that are further north are bigger and meaner. I know [00:09:00] in the sixties there was a scientist up in Brunswick, Maine and he warned us, he said, uh, he did all this work on green crabs, a lot of work on it, and he said, listen.

If temperatures continue to rise and you know, we don't get our act together and we don't start paying attention to this species, we're gonna have a population explosion. That's sort of what really started happening about 20 years or so ago, is our winters, they were shorter, we didn't get those very low, low temperatures.

So two things really kill green crabs, no oxygen, and incredibly low temperatures. Mm-hmm. So they freeze. What would happen is we would get these long, freezing, freezing, freezing winters and it would knock down the population of the green crabs. So it would take them a while to get back up to speed, right.

Yeah. We don't get those anymore. Our winters are shorter, but they're reproductive and foraging timeline has gotten longer so they can eat and reproduce more often throughout the year than before. 
Brian Yurasits: Gabby, I know that you mentioned their impact [00:10:00] on species that they might compete with for space and and resources like other crab species.

Are there any other impacts that they have on like shellfish or finfish or any other parts of the ecosystem? 

Gabriela Bradt: We call green crabs ecosystem engineers, so they're particularly rough in estuarine and coastal areas because their favorite thing to eat are shellfish, especially soft shell clams, mussels. Oysters not as much 'cause they're hard, but little baby oysters definitely.

So that impacts growing aquaculture industries and things like that. But they love to dig and so they can dig up to eight inches to get to that clam, to get to, you know, all of those shellfish. And as they do that, they perturb the bottom and they burrow and they dig. And so you see a lot of estuarine areas that experience that sort of calving of the, the marshes. Mm-hmm. And so on and so forth. So you see a lot more erosion, things become more unstable. [00:11:00] I don't know. This is not my wheelhouse. I know nothing really about eelgrass, but they like to clip it and I don't actually understand why. So they're really, really bad for eelgrass.

So they clip the eelgrass, kill eelgrass beds, dig around in the eelgrass and so, eelgrass, which is incredibly important for healthy estuaries are getting a beating because of these green crabs and so on. As they do that, other species don't thrive, so then you get a loss of biodiversity, which is huge.

Erik Chapman: Digging, clipping eelgrass, eating our native species. Mm-hmm.

Brian Yurasits: They're asking for a fight. 

Gabriela Bradt: Yeah, they're.

Erik Chapman: I'm starting to get a little bit angry at these guys.

Gabriela Bradt: Well, you're like 200 years too late.

Erik Chapman: Yeah. Yeah. That's I, yeah. No. Yeah. But I also feel a little outnumbered. 

Gabriela Bradt: Yeah. A little bit. A little bit. 

Brian Yurasits: Yeah. To that point of being 200 years too late, Gabby, you did ultimately decide to do something about green crabs and raise awareness about this invasive species. Gabby, I [00:12:00] think it would be great for our listeners to hear about the New Hampshire Green Crab Project. 

Gabriela Bradt: The New Hampshire Green Crab Project is now 10 years old. It all started when I had a intra sea grant program exchange with my counterpart at Louisiana Sea Grant. Her name's Twyla Cheatwood. I went down to Louisiana and saw what fishery specialists were doing down there. And then that summer she came up here. We were talking to my lobsterman buddy, he was emptying his traps and he was asking her, oh, Louisiana, you're from, you know, blue crab country. And then he looks at me and he says, so what am I gonna do with this? And he pulls out a green crab. 'cause it was in his trap and he was annoyed about it. And he's like, what do I do with these things? I spend so much time getting rid of them. They eat my bait so they waste my money and I can't sell them. And he looked at Twyla and he said, I imagine they molt right, you can eat them. And we started looking at [00:13:00] each other. I was like. Well, that is interesting. He's like, well, so can you help? It was literally a need that he saw. It would not be a waste of time to try and figure out whether it can be eaten, it can be utilized, or what. 

Brian Yurasits: Like you said, you've been doing this for 10 years. I feel like some of those long lasting projects, you aren't going out seeking them out. They come to you because the community demands it in a way. Right. And as you began to. Start this New Hampshire Green Crab project. Did you find more and more fishers or community members reaching out to you now that, now that there was someone working on this? 

Gabriela Bradt: I can't tell you how many, um, emails and phone calls I get pretty much on a monthly basis inquiring about green crabs, from fishermen, from shellfish farmers about what can I do with these? I wanna hop on board, I wanna harvest them, I wanna make a living out of it. At the end of the day, we need more fishermen to, or you know, anyone really to put in the time [00:14:00] to not only remove this species, but then come up with innovative ways of using it. 'cause it's not like a regular fishery, if you will. You can't just go harvest and somebody will buy it for you and then it gets distributed across the country. 

Brian Yurasits: If you could speak a little bit more about soft shell crabs, why do they molt and when are they generally molting? 

Gabriela Bradt: The reason they molt, they're crustaceans. They have an exoskeleton. As they grow, they need to shed that exoskeleton. The idea is you get them at a proper restaurant appetizer size, grab them as they molt and are soft, and then eat them. Green crabs are not very big. And the other thing I want to clarify is that just because it's an invasive species does not mean that it's bad for you. It just means it doesn't belong here. It's not poisonous, it's not bad to eat. But it's not a good picking crab. By that I mean the legs aren't huge, so you can't pick out meat. So if you're gonna start a new seafood product, right, [00:15:00] you wanna get like a real bite. So if you can get a whole crab, a whole, you know, mouthful, if you will fry it up, boom. Soft shell, blue crabs are a big thing down south. That was the other kind of frame of reference and template that was in the back of my head. When I started this, my intern and I got a few traps, and the idea was we're gonna get 50 males, 50 females. We put these traps in there, we didn't catch anything. It turns out that there's a season to the crabs.

We ended up actually finding a lot of females in Great Bay, but very few males. They don't molt at the same time, males and females do not molt at the same time. In the research, it didn't really say, you know, when or where the season is. They just said, if you're not finding any males, it's probably because they've molted and they went out further somewhere else, and the females are probably getting ready eating or carrying eggs and just chilling in their [00:16:00] sort of home range.

Brian Yurasits: Question as someone who's never eaten a soft shelf crab before, have you?

Erik Chapman: Uh, I don't think I have.

Brian Yurasits: I've, I've never prepared one either. Do you prepare them with the innards and everything?

Gabriela Bradt: No.

Brian Yurasits: Like my, my neighbor will often refer to it as mustard. When we clean like blue claw crabs growing up back in Long Island, he goes, ah, you got scoop out the mustard.

Gabriela Bradt: So with a soft shell, it's actually quite barbaric. You might have to edit this out too. You basically, while they're alive. Cut off their face. And then because they're so soft, you can actually lift their carapas and you can see their gills, so you'll scoop that out. You scoop out all of the underneath the carapas.
And then you flip it over and the apron, the triangle part on the abdomen, sort of a modified tail. You pull that apart. Yeah. And you yank, and the stuff comes out that way. 

Erik Chapman: The trick is finding the ones at the right size. After they molt and then you, this process that you just described makes them ready to eat and I sense [00:17:00] that you and I are probably gonna have our first. 

Gabriela Bradt: Yeah, you're gonna have to taste it.

Brian Yurasits: Yeah, we will. 

Gabriela Bradt: Spoiler alert. It tastes like crabs. 

Brian Yurasits: It tastes like crabs. 

Gabriela Bradt: If you tell me it tastes like chicken, I'll know your lying. 

Brian Yurasits: A big part of your New Hampshire green crab project seems to be if you can't beat 'em to eat 'em. How else have you worked with the local markets, the local harvesters? So, so it sounds like you, you were trying to understand the extent of green crabs in New Hampshire waters and then there was this other part of your project that is, that is trying to find ways to eat this, what sounds like a remarkably sustainable source of seafood. 

Gabriela Bradt: You know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? Figuring out hotspots, molting times, you know, where are there a lot? All of it was meant for streamlining a potential harvesting capability for our fishermen.
And it's not necessarily about making a new fishery or making bank, it was basically how can we [00:18:00] tame this, you know, species and maybe get enough money to buy a tank of gas for, you know, for our fishermen, making it sort of worth their while. And at the same time providing a new seafood product. The reason they're sustainable is because there's so many of them. Humans are really good at out fishing things, so it only makes sense that we can totally eat 'em to beat 'em. One female, two three inch female will produce one to two clutches of 180,000 eggs a year. The idea was to work with local chefs and restaurants in which we did, to introduce these crabs to their clientele.

Brian Yurasits: And I want to get into this extension element of the Green Crab Project. I can see personally it's come a really long way since you've started. One being, uh, the Tamworth distilling, uh, Crab Trapper whiskey. I'm so curious to hear what it was like to be on. Was it the late. Show. 

Gabriela Bradt: I wasn't on the late show, but the Whiskey was.

Brian Yurasits: The whiskey was [00:19:00] i'd love to hear about that experience of just seeing this product that you collaborated on, on national TV reaching so many millions of people. You have that scale and, and I've seen that there's a lot of coverage nationally around. The story of invasive green crabs, but also at the local level of just going out and doing hunts for green crabs and engaging students and families.
I've been out there with you to photograph one of these events and you can see it's like one of the most entertaining things to do. You go down there, you're just tied pooling and looking for. Green crabs. It's like tide pooling with a goal in mind. I love to see how both the kids and the adults are like equally entertained by just waiting around in the mud flats looking for these green crabs. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about the success of your extension work and, and like how you have brought it to this level of awareness over the years. 

Gabriela Bradt: I am only one person, and my interns [00:20:00] were only once a year in the summer. So I knew that I needed more capacity and I also wanted to spread the word, and so I created the, this monitoring component of the project that came out of working with coastal research volunteers. That was quite a steep learning curve because you have to remember, these are citizens, they don't wanna mess things up and their time is valuable. Yeah. So you can't ask, it can't be this very extensive protocol with all of these scientific parameters that you have to do. It has to be fun, easy and reproducible. Two things made a world of difference. One was the open source platform and data, but then also just working with Wells Costello and CRV because again, capacity. He can hold the hunts. I can help when I can. He works with Nature Groupie to get volunteers. Anyone can do it so there's not, you know, this extensive training and so on. It's just go over flip rocks for an hour and [00:21:00] measure and collect these data and count crabs, and so it's reproducible and it requires one hour of people's time. Kids are the best, mud, water, sunshine, and flipping over rocks, it's a really fun hour and they always have so many questions and so that just sort of opens up not only the idea of the invasive species issue, but just biology and the world around you.

Erik Chapman: Part of the beauty of what Gabby's been doing with the Green Crab Project is it takes a lot of time and energy to kind of, to set the groundwork for making money on something like this. And she's described really beautifully that some of those really important steps thinking through like, okay, are good people gonna eat this?
Yes, but these are the other things that they need to understand if they're gonna be comfortable with that. You know, where do you see this going and where has it gone that kind of gets you excited from that perspective. 

Gabriela Bradt: Part of it is being able to figure out the molting process. Once we did that and really learned and explored and researched it, that then [00:22:00] gave us sort of this tech transfer, right? We could then involve the different restaurants, and then once we were working with the restaurants and having people taste them, then we could ask the chefs, what's the price range? And then also, soft softshell season is only really this short amount of time. What happens to that other hard shell biomass? We have all started thinking about value added products, so compost. So we have another group that's looking at composting. We had a couple of research grants looking at making fish sauce. Right now, there's so much interest. Mm-hmm. What happens is it goes in these cycles. People get super psyched and then they realize here is the biggest brick wall. 

Yeah. And that is how do we meet demand? How do we deal with all this biomass? Yeah. When you have to cross state lines, right? So you have to figure out regulations. What do you do with it? So if you're gonna make compost, who's gonna take 'em? And keep in mind, everybody needs to have their bit of the pie, right? 

[00:23:00] Yes. So it can't be all for free. We have fishermen who call me all the time, I wanna get in on this. I was like, awesome, great. And he is like, all right, so you sell them for me. No, I don't sell the crabs for you. Like you kind of have to pound the pavement. That's not how fisheries really work. You harvest, somebody buys it from you, you get a paycheck, and then the person who buys it from you distributes it. We have all the pieces. They're just not linked together. And a lot of it has to do with funding? Are there things that we could retrofit for processing, for example, um, in these different spaces, are there, you know, distributors that would be willing to, you know, take a risk with this? Um, how much would you be willing to buy green crabs per pound just to compost them? 

Those are the big questions. It's the biomass. Yeah. And who's going to make money? 

Brian Yurasits: Is there an industry out there that has the infrastructure that might be able to meet some of your demands and they just need to get a little bit creative and willing to work in the field of green crabs. Are there any markets [00:24:00] that are particularly promising? I know you mentioned compost. What about like dog food or, I've heard bait as well. 

Gabriela Bradt: The dog food and the compost that's the one that I think is the most desirable because that is where you can get rid of volume. The biggest, most profitable market currently for hard shell crabs is the recreational Tautog fishery.
Mm-hmm. And whelk fisheries, but mostly Tautog. But you know, a lot of people keep that very close to their chest. They're not going to share who's buying where, when, and how. That is really where you can get rid of volume. Not to the extent that dog food and compost could, but enough. I mean, there's a lot of recreational fishermen out there.

I do believe truly, if we can teach enough fishermen or anyone how to molt crabs on the right season, you get more bang for your buck. Because if we can keep telling people eat soft shell crabs, they like it, they eat it. Our restaurant partners [00:25:00] sold out whenever we give it to them. You still need space on the water.
We're not gonna have recirculating systems for green crabs. But if we can do that, I think that will take off. And, and just teaching people that it's intense from like April to, you know, late June, early July. 'cause it's constant. You're holding onto pre-molt crabs waiting for them to molt, getting them out of the water before they get too hard and putting them in a, you know, refrigerator and putting them to market. They've done it. They do that in Venice. They make bank, and people love it. You know, they're, it's a thing. I feel like with our partners, we've figured out a lot of this stuff already. We've done, we've laid that groundwork and now it's just getting more people to jump on board. 

Brian Yurasits: So what I'm hearing is that maybe some local businesses need to risk it for the green crab biscuit.

Gabriela Bradt: Oh boy.

Brian Yurasits: I've been thinking of that line for the past five minutes.

Gabriela Bradt: Oh, oh boy. Oh boy.

Brian Yurasits: I had, I had to end with that one, Gabby. I'm not gonna lie. But no, it sounds like you've really painted a picture [00:26:00] of what a shifting New Hampshire seafood culture could look like that includes educated consumers, businesses that are willing to use their infrastructure and become players in this space, and all of that together will benefit our local industry and our local ecosystems. If this is a pretty easy way of starting to make a living on the water with a few traps and a skiff and a couple of crates to molt your crabs, I mean, you, you might be able to start recruiting younger people 'cause it won't be such a hurdle. 

Erik Chapman: And I think it's a, I guess a, a, a really strong argument for continued extension and outreach work.
You know, it's hard for businesses to take the risk into something that is not certain, I can understand their hesitancy, but this is a perfect place for sea grant extension and cooperative extension to step in and do what we can to explore as much as we can and, and take people along for that exploration period to continue to set the stage for maybe a bigger leap.[00:27:00] 

Brian Yurasits: Yes, I agree. And Gabby, thank you so much for taking the time and telling our audience everything about green crabs. So, so for any of our listeners out there, the next time that you're spending time on the coast tide pooling in any of our local waters, and you flip over that rock, you now know how to identify a green crab and you've learned about the impact that they have on our local ecosystems. And maybe just maybe you'll be interested in trying some green crab recipes at your local restaurant. 

Gabriela Bradt: Thanks for having me, guys. 
Brian Yurasits: In act two of this episode on Green Crabs, we'll take a bite out of the green crab problem with Mary Parks, the founder and executive director of green crab.org, a nonprofit organization with a two clawed approach. Building culinary markets for European green crab, and spreading awareness of its invasive impact across the globe. 

Stay with us.[00:28:00] 

So my first question for you, Mary, would be if you could speak a little bit about your background and the path that led you to found green crab.org. What was your journey to, to get into the position that you're in today? 

Mary Parks: Yeah, so I grew up in Midcoast, Maine, um, in a town that had a lot of clammers. And witnessing a lot of them starting to lose their job as the clam industry started to decline. My mom was also an environmental science teacher at our local public high school, and so I did grow up with some familiarity with invasive species and green crabs in particular. First harvested green crabs to eat in 2006, and I made a delicious stock and then studied them a bit throughout college, but it wasn't until I started working at a fish wholesaler after school and seeing all these crabs coming in and being sold as bait, then meeting a group of people on the North Shore who had come up with the idea or had the idea of eating them, [00:29:00] as well as connecting with people like Gabby who have been working with green crabs. The really cool part about kind of opening this can of worms was realizing how many people had come up with the same idea. And also that communities had been cooking with grain crabs in the US since the nineties.

But I think despite all of these people having the idea of eating grain crabs, the thing that was really missing is the supply chain component, the harvester and the chef education components. Even though a lot of people were excited about eating green crabs, nobody could source 'em like they could source other seafood. Sales reps and people who are on the supply side considered them to be bait.

And so they were communicating that messaging. And that even though a lot of chefs might have been interested in them, they hadn't necessarily had the chance to work with green crab, or to source them sustainably. And so we founded green crab.org and we have a two clawed approach we say. Building culinary markets for invasive green crab, and that really [00:30:00] focused on chef and harvester and wholesaler outreach, and then spreading awareness of their invasive impact too.

Brian Yurasits: I love your two clawed approach. You saw the work that was being done in kind of patchworks and had an opportunity to bring people together and educate, you know, all, all these different players in the supply chain of potentially bringing green crabs to market. What markets seem to be the most promising to you to get us to have this positive impact in the fight against this invasive species by eating them. 

Like how many would we need to eat in your opinion. 

Mary Parks: So I don't have the answer to that question. Yeah. And I think it's really important that we keep asking that question and support the researchers who are involved in monitoring and mitigation efforts, understanding the size of potential markets. I will say that part of the reason that we focus on the culinary side is that the bait market for green crabs is somewhat limited.

Gotcha. Um, they're mostly used for Tautog [00:31:00] and striped bass. Hook and line fishing, which tends to be seasonal, tends to be mostly for recreational harvesters. There are Canadians who are using green crabs in lobster bait, and that's great. And our organization, like we are totally for non culinary use of green crabs.

But the reason that we focus on the culinary side is for two reasons. We think the market has a potential to be a lot bigger than composting and bait markets. But also these markets fit into culinary markets. Um, bait markets tend to be not only very seasonal and a little bit caustic in terms of, um, how much they change. It also means that the harvester's usually being paid significantly less than if they're selling for culinary use for consumption by humans. 

Brian Yurasits: I'm gonna ask you about another market here. What about the market for animal food? Yeah. I'm curious, is there large potential there? Does it offer the harvesters less money than the culinary market?

Mary Parks: We are very pro pet food markets for green crabs. I think too, because it fits [00:32:00] so well into finding a use for those hard shells. But I do think, especially when we're looking at how could an individual harvester build out a business? Those markets are going to be overlapping, like, I don't know, a single person who is selling purely for culinary use.
And so having those markets to compliment culinary sales is also super important. 

Brian Yurasits: I have a small, young dog and she, she actually loves seafood products and I know that that is difficult to find like really sustainable, locally sourced dog products as well. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how green crabs are marketed as like a truly sustainable seafood. 

Mary Parks: So to start off, and part of the reason that I think so many harvesters love catching green crabs if they can find a market is, it is super easy to catch them. Green crabs also, like they pack a punch and a lot of flavor for the amount of crab that you purchase.

And this is one of the reasons that chefs love cooking with 'em and that we've had chefs come back to us [00:33:00] time and time again, some of whom, they don't care at all about them being invasive. Which to me is a success story in itself. When a chef is excited about something as just being a really cool, good seafood, it's one thing for us to say, this is why you should eat green crabs 'cause they're bad for the environment, it's another thing for a chef to say, oh, I love cooking with these. Also, they're invasive and eating them could do good. One thing though, that. I am really, really excited about is products that are emerging that are easier to ship, easier to distribute, and easier to store.

So for example, St. Ours, uh, Broth Company, they just came out with a green crab broth that's powdered. That is really easy for a chef to receive from another area and like, it's not gonna be a ton of postage. 

Brian Yurasits: What would you say is like a common denominator between the chefs that you work with who are willing to try something new, like green crabs and incorporate that into their menus at their restaurants?

Mary Parks: A lot of the chefs that we work with, they have a personal [00:34:00] connection to green crabs. Many of them though, don't, and I think that bringing it back to the broadness of their invasive impact, as well as connecting them to other chefs that have cooked with green crabs has been the most useful marketing tool for us.

Chefs speaking and networking with other chefs about why they like to cook with green crabs, and also how they could be a substitute for other crabs as well. I think that's really powerful and impactful to see people who are cooking with green crabs because it emulates something that they had access to and has cultural value.

I also, I think that in looking at how chefs talk to other chefs, it's also really important to understand the conversations they're having with sales floors and sales teams. At the end of the day, if that salesperson doesn't believe in selling green crabs or they don't think that they have culinary value, it's really hard to make that connection so the chef feels also confident sourcing from 'em. Working with different wholesalers [00:35:00] and talking through with their sales team, like these are the culinary applications for green crabs, these are the different cuisines that can use green crabs as a substitute for other crabs, these are the ways that you process and handle them.

Brian Yurasits: You really take the holistic approach to this, don't you? And um, I want to talk about the potential to educate consumers at that level of putting green crabs on your menu. Anytime in my personal experience that I've consumed green crabs, I've had a long conversation with the people that I'm sitting there eating this, this meal with, about green crabs.
And inevitably, you know, people start talking about ocean conservation and just generally speaking, it gets the conversation started. Uh, I'd, I'd love to hear your insights into the world of education around green crabs through food. 

Mary Parks: The most important thing once the crabs make it to the restaurant is the chef having confidence in not only how to store and process and prep green crabs, [00:36:00] but also talk through what their front of house team.
How do you have a conversation with somebody at your restaurant about their invasive impact? Anyone who's worked in restaurants in front of house knows that pre meal period is, especially if you're working with like very specific dishes, that 15 minutes or 20 minutes that you have where you have front of house people who are talking to a chef is so important for learning new things, for information sharing, and that's really where you're educating the people who are actually gonna be talking to consumers.

We provide them with various resources on, like, these are ways that green crabs impact specific species. For example, we might have a different conversation with an oyster bar that is really focused on shellfish that might be impacted by green crabs, compared to an Italian restaurant that has whole fluke on the menu.
Um, so we can have that conversation about how this whole fluke maybe with like a green crab sauce on it, is impacted by green crabs because of eelgrass. 

Brian Yurasits: Before we get into recipes [00:37:00] and what green crabs taste like, do you have any advice for someone who has the ability to fish for green crabs to get their foot in the door with this? 

Mary Parks: They can sign up for our free harvester advisory network that is now over 140 green crab harvesters and people who wanna harvest green crabs, all across the East coast, the US and Canada. So through this network we do have, um, a bunch of free resources on how to trap green crabs. We have a Meet the Harvester series where we highlight how different people trap green crabs, their preferences on bait, trap types, what ecosystems are fishing out of.
The New Hampshire Secret Guide on Green Crabs and soft shells, I think is a really useful starting place and I know so many people who have seen that guide, the people who are sharing with each other and the people who are building these networks and connections, are the ones who are able to make it work.

Brian Yurasits: The first time that I tried Green Crabs actually was with you at an event you did at Crane Beach. [00:38:00] And I, I'm curious if you could speak a little bit to, if you have a pitch for, uh, consumers who have never tried green crab before, like what would you tell them to take that leap of faith and try something new?

Mary Parks: My first thing that I try to figure out is what type of crab eater are you? And this is important because, for example, if you're used to shucking crawdads, if you're used to sitting on the table and laboriously picking at meat, we might have a different conversation about green crabs and somebody who is only doing crab meat and only doing king crab legs.
The first thing I do often tell people is like, green crabs are not a crab that you necessarily wanna pick for meat unless you have a lot of patience and some big crabs. It's sweet, it's delicious. It definitely takes some time. But if you are somebody who is dedicated to picking and shucking and it's like a group activity too, I've done like crab oils for example, that works out.
That being said, I think it is useful [00:39:00] to look to their native range as well as similar crab species. So a lot of people in the US aren't used to eating smaller crab species, but if we looked, for example, to Venice, they shuck green crab row, and it actually tastes really similar to blue crab row. So if you're from South Carolina and you grew up eating she crab soup, that's a conversation to have about a way in which you could cook with green crab row.

If you're somebody who grew up eating rice patty crabs, there are a lot of recipes that would work really well for green crabs. 

Brian Yurasits: I love how you speak to all these different cultural cuisines and how you can kind of substitute green crab for something that you're very familiar and comfortable working with. I'm on your webpage right now looking at some of your different recipes and like what resonates to me where I've traditionally grown up with my family who's Italian from Long Island. We would cook with blue crabs quite often in pasta, right? And so I'm looking at your pasta dishes and the wheels are turning in my head, but I, I'm looking through here and I see suggestions for [00:40:00] different kind of cocktails.

A dirty crab martini. I see sauces, ramen, gumbo, even a loaded baked potato with green crab gravy, like this is very diverse. What you can do with green crabs. Is there a recipe that is your particular favorite? 

Mary Parks: What all of those recipes share in common and also, how green crabs are largely used across their native range, is stocks, sauces, and soups. They're a rich, flavorful crab. The most foundational recipe that a person can learn, and we have a guide where we step through, like I think it's six different types of green crab stocks that you can make, is figuring out your stock. 'cause if you get the stock, that's the base for so many other types of recipes from pasta to gumbo to gravy. That being said, my favorite recipe is probably the one that you'll find on our homepage, which is a crab row and corn salad. Yeah, and I love serving this too because I've put it in the top [00:41:00] of the shell and it's like the perfect party appetizer. 'cause people can just have a little bit of salad and then you don't need any serving utensils other than the carapace.

Once there's consistent access to soft shells. Ooh, they're so fun to cook with. Mm-hmm. There's so many different ways to cook with softshell green crabs too. For example, like you can prepare them, like people do blue crabs and trimming 'em and taking off, um, different parts and, uh, the, the gills and cleaning them. Or you can treat them like the Venetians do, which sometimes they'll feed them milk, sometimes they'll just fry them whole. That definitely is what I'm most excited about in terms of the green crab market. 

Brian Yurasits: It sounds like there's a lot of potential in the soft shell crab fishery, for sure. What would you say in your opinion, are some of the biggest challenges that the market and the fishery for green crabs faces today? I know you've been doing this since 2020. 

Mary Parks: I would definitely say that public perception is a big one. We still talk to [00:42:00] a lot of people who think of green crabs only as being a bait species or a trash fish. Which is something that has been happening less and less with so many chefs starting to ask for this.

And also like nothing makes me happier than a wholesaler who kind of told me that, you know, they're not interested a few years ago, reaching out again, being like, I actually have these chefs that want green crabs and can you help me with the supplier. Having more information on green crabs that are being harvested so that we can understand the scope of the market, but also long-term research and federal funding for people who are involved in monitoring and mitigation efforts is so, so important. Because we can't uplift green crab markets without understanding what's going on. Like funding affects everyone, and so it also impacts the ability for people to explore and develop new products. Most green crab work has come from some sort of grant. [00:43:00] So it's definitely something where, when you're in the early phases of developing a product or you're in the early phases of understanding how to molt a crab is super important.

Brian Yurasits: What makes you hopeful about the future of your work to get folks to eat more of this invasive green crab? 

Mary Parks: I would say the momentum. The fact that in the past couple of years we've only seen the number of restaurants selling green crabs on their menu and wholesalers offering green crabs, increase.

Seeing that growth, seeing chefs networking with each other and making those introductions is so powerful. I do hope that in the future we see more restaurants working with green crabs, we see more supply chains built out that make them accessible. We see harvesters have consistent markets too, so that they're able to keep taking them outta the water and putting them onto plates, and also [00:44:00] focus more on their green crabs as a business.

Brian Yurasits: But yeah, Mary, thank you so much for entertaining all of my questions on green crabs. Um, and definitely check out green crab.org, right? Not plural green crab.org. 
Cheers.

Brian Yurasits: So that's our show for today. It's funny how a tiny crab can force us to find creative solutions to big problems. The European green crab might always be with us nipping at eelgrass and engineering coastal ecosystems, but maybe just maybe a future where these crabs end up on our dinner plates is one small way to tip the balance back in our favor.

As the saying goes, when life gives you green crabs make sustainable seafood. The story of green crabs shows us what happens when an uninvited guest takes over, but it also shows us what's possible when communities get creative. Hearing from scientists like Gabby Bradt and stories about harvesters and chefs working with Mary Parks reminds [00:45:00] us that people on the front lines are turning a problem into an opportunity for sustainable seafood.

Before we wrap this episode up, we'd like to give some shout outs. First off to Marissa McMahan, the Director of Fisheries at Manament, who partners with Gabby and helped to create the Green Crab Guide in the field and in the kitchen. And we'd also like to give some shout outs to UNH Extension and to Nature Groupie. Who helps organize those great green crab hunts that Gabby mentioned earlier in the episode.

Time and Tide is a podcast from New Hampshire Sea Grant. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. Leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, and remember time and tide wait for [00:46:00] none.

New Hampshire Sea Grant works to enhance our relationship with the coastal environment to sustain healthy and resilient ecosystems, economies, and communities through integrated research, extension, education, and communications efforts. Based at the University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Sea Grant is one of 34 programs in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program, a state-federal partnership serving America’s coasts. 

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