First detection of highly invasive European green crab in Skagit Bay

A participant from the Molt Search program made the important discovery

November 25, 2025

La Conner, Wash. — In late September, the molt from a European green crab was found at Similk Beach, on the northern end of the Swinomish Tribal Reservation. This was the first detection of the highly invasive species in the northern Whidbey Basin, which includes Skagit Bay.

Community member Shirley Hoh made the discovery while participating in a routine search as part of Molt ...

25
NOV

0

Green Crab Monitoring, WSG News Blog

Crab Team Welcomes Hannah Brown as Student Assistant

June 13, 2025

Hello everyone!

I am so excited to serve as the new Crab Team graduate student assistant. I am passionate about both crab and citizen science, so I feel like I am definitely in the right place here amongst all these crabby people. I just finished my first year of graduate school at the University of Washington in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and I am currently working on my thesis which uses Dungeness crab data ...

13
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Crab Team Welcomes Christopher Harris-Adams as Student Assistant

June 10, 2024

This spring, WSG Crab Team was joined by an undergraduate student assistant, Christopher Harris-Adams. Christopher Harris-Adams is currently pursuing his B.S. at UW’s College of the Environment researching microclimate variation in the greenhouse environment. We asked Christopher to share some of his story and introduce himself to the broader Crab Team community.

What brought you to Crab Team? What interested you in the position?

For quite a long time, I’ve been interested in the structure and ...

10
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Student Makes First Detection of Green Crab in False Bay, San Juan Island

June 9, 2025

Students at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) found a green crab molt in False Bay on San Juan Island last weekend. This molt is the first evidence of green crabs found in False Bay and the first evidence since 2019 of green crabs in the San Juan Islands. In 2016, San Juan Island was the site of the first green crab confirmed along the Salish Sea ...

9
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Second Annual Salish Sea-wide Molt Blitz coming June 20

June 2, 2025

Are you one of the millions of Washington residents living on or near the Salish Sea? Join the Salish Sea-wide Molt Blitz on June 20 to contribute to the largest single-day dataset of crab molts collected in our state.

Molts are the old shells that crabs shed when they grow. Collecting and recording these molts provides valuable data on which species of crab are present in an area, including invasive European green crab ...

2
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring, WSG News Blog

Sunsetting the Transect Survey 🌇

April 1, 2025

Today is the first day of the 2025 monitoring season and the Crab Team monitoring network is undergoing one of our biggest changes of the last decade. It is with very considered deliberation, discussion, and debate that we have decided to sunset the shoreline transect survey, one of the three sampling protocols that has been a part of the routine at Salish Sea Crab Team sites for nearly a decade.

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1
APR

0

Green Crab Monitoring, Uncategorized

Crab Team Turns 10: Crabstock Shell-ebration

February 26, 2025

Crab Team Origins & 10 Years of Accomplishments

From humble beginnings spent daydreaming in 2014, from the first trap in the water in 2015, to a network of 307 active monitors across 68 sites: in 2024, Crab Team celebrated a decade of trudging around in the mud and counting crabs! A ...

26
FEB

0

Green Crab Monitoring

2024 Green Crab Status Summary: Part 2 (Coastal Estuaries)

February 13, 2025

In this post, we’ll continue our reflections back on 2024 through the lens of the status and trends of European green crabs in Washington. In the last post, we shared observations from trapping efforts across Salish Sea shorelines. Here we shift to shorelines on Washington’s Pacific coast.

The Coast in Context

As of writing this post, the total number of individual green crabs removed from Washington ...

13
FEB

0

Green Crab Monitoring

2024 Green Crab Status Summary: Part 1 (Inland)

January 6, 2025

It’s a season of new beginnings, and as we transition into the New Year, we continue to wrap up what 2024 meant in terms of the European green crab invasion in Washington. And as WSG Crab Team wraps up the 10th year of green crab monitoring, we also find ourselves reflecting on the last decade. In the next few blog posts, we aim to share some of these summaries and reflections. We will ...

6
JAN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Protocol in Focus: Catches in Focus

December 16th, 2024

Tips for taking the best photos of your bin catches

Your bin photos may feel as easy as the click of a button, but they are the essential step in the protocol that allows the Crab Team dataset to be used by researchers. Namely, they are the tool for validating all your findings in our data QC process. As data submitters know, Crab Team staff (Emily!) cross checks every single trapping sheet and photo from ...

16
DEC

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Protocol in Focus: Why do we measure native crabs, too?

June 18, 2024

Why Measure Native Species?

When it comes to interactions between crabs, whether of the same species or of differing species, size matters. When crabs run into each other out on tide flats, in lagoons, or channels, they might compete for food or shelter, or they may actually try to prey on each other. In these encounters, the general rule of #CrabLife is that bigger crabs win over smaller crabs. So knowing the size of not only green ...

17
JUN

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Crab Team Welcomes Zach Bengtsson as Student Assistant

May 23, 2024

This winter, WSG Crab Team was joined by a second graduate student assistant, Zach Bengtsson. Zach is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences researching stress responses of marine invertebrates. We asked Zach to share some of his story with us to introduce himself to the broader Crab Team community.

What brought you to Crab Team? What interested you in the position?

My current graduate work ...

23
MAY

0

Green Crab Monitoring

2023 Green Crab Status Summary: Part 2 (Coast)

May 7, 2024

Continuing our summary of 2023 green crab status and trends

Pacific Coast

The momentum and dedication to extensive trapping for European green crab on Washington’s Pacific coastline continued to grow through 2023. Over the course of the year, nearly 355,000 green crabs were removed from the coastal estuaries and shorelines. Let’s take a closer look at what the catch data showed about population status and trends.

Newer sites with high abundances

7
MAY

0

Green Crab Monitoring

2023 Green Crab Status Summary: Part 1 (Inland)

April 10, 2024

While 2023 already seems like an eon ago, last year’s trapping season is still very much on our minds even as we launch the 2024 monitoring effort. The winter is a time for green crab managers to regroup, review data to interpret green crab population patterns and think about strategies for the coming year. In December, WSG hosted our third annual Trapper’s Summit, a day-long workshop for trapping partners all over the state to come and ...

10
APR

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Protocol in Focus: Why do we measure European green crabs?

November 17, 2023

We are Crab Team after all, so it’s perhaps no surprise that we are not shy about getting up to our elbows in details about the crabs we catch. But what can we actually learn from looking at size data of crabs? What makes handling all the angry pinchers worthwhile?

We’re covering this rich topic in two issues of Protocol in Focus. This time, we’ll shed light on what we can ...

15
NOV

0

Green Crab Monitoring

Environmental Threats

A participant from the Molt Search program made the important discovery

What brought you to Crab Team? What interested you in the position?

Crab Team Origins & 10 Years of Accomplishments

The Coast in Context

Tips for taking the best photos of your bin catches

Why Measure Native Species?

What brought you to Crab Team? What interested you in the position?

Pacific Coast

Newer sites with high abundances