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 ...
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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 learn about ...
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September 20, 2023
Hello WSG Crab Team Community!
My name is Elyse Kelsey and I am thrilled to be joining Crab Team as a Student Assistant. I just missed the field season this year but I am excited to meet and work alongside the incredible volunteers and partners that make this work possible next summer! For the next few months, I will be keeping busy by entering data, managing field gear, and offering administrative support from ...
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June 15, 2023
As we dive into the 2023 European green crab trapping season, it’s important to reflect on the insights gained from the coastal green crab populations in 2022. This summary of green crab observations from Washington’s coastal estuaries complements our Inland 2022 wrap-up, rounding out our focus on the trends and patterns observed from green crab trapping results across the state. We pulled from several different data sources to piece together an ...
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May 1, 2023
WSG and WSU Extension have teamed up to launch a new volunteer-based early detection program to complement the existing Crab Team monitoring network—introducing, Molt Search.
Molt search builds on the hard work of Crab Team monitors who have been conducting early detection surveys since 2015. The network has found some of the first generations ...
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March 13, 2023
Crab Team has come a long way since a handful of intrepid early-adopter volunteers put their boots in the mud for our pilot season in August 2015. Since that time, the network has:
February 9, 2023
Hello Crab Team community!
My name is Lisa Watkins and I’m thrilled to be joining you all as Washington Sea Grant’s new Community Science Specialist. A large part of my role will be to coordinate the Crab Team monitoring network, aiming to make participation–from recruitment and training to data reporting and beyond—as meaningful and smooth-running as possible.
As a network, Crab Team has set a standard of what meaningful, management-relevant community science efforts can look like, and ...
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December 31 2022
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to quantify green crab efforts and numbers to understand status and trends. Suffice to say that any way you slice it, any way you define and quantify metrics, 2022 was a big year in Washington for European green crab management. With the launch of the Governor’s Emergency Order and WDFW-coordinated response measures, this year brought ...
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Header Photo: Beautiful early morning field day at Dakota Creek, Drayton Harbor. Crab Team and WDFW staff check a trap. Photo: Leah Robison
October 18, 2022
Hello Washington Sea Grant Crab Team enthusiasts!
I’m very excited to introduce myself as the new Crab Team Early Detection Project Assistant. I’ll be here through the end of the year to help develop a new early detection program aiming to complement your stellar monitoring efforts with a less intensive and ...
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September 26, 2022
This is the fourth and final in a series of posts on a Crab Team project to develop environmental DNA (eDNA) for use in early detection and management of European green crab. Links to the previous posts are found in the text below.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) has recently gained attention as a potential early detection and monitoring tool for green crab, thanks in part to work done by Abby Keller ...
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Header Photo: My first time working in mud flats at Fidalgo Bay which involved a mix of getting stuck and lots of fun! Photo: Emily Grason
September 20, 2022
Hello Crab Team enthusiasts! I am excited to introduce myself to you all as the new Crab Team student assistant. These past few months, I have been doing lots of data entry and am so impressed with this team’s work. I have also had the pleasure of ...
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August 17, 2022
This year marks Crab Team’s eighth monitoring season, a fact that completely blows our minds. Some of the Crab Team sites have been systematically sampled since we kicked off in August 2015. As this long term ecological dataset grows even longer, it becomes increasingly valuable to look at changes over space and time.
Lest you start to imagine us swimming in our vault of datasheets like Scrooge McDuck
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August 9, 2022
Crab Team volunteer monitors have been working in Chuckanut Bay since 2017, and just last month they pulled up their first live green crab during monthly sampling. The crab was a larger (77mm) older female, indicating she’d been present at the site for at least three or four years.
In 2019, three green crabs were captured by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in assessment trapping. Since that time, no further live captures have been made, including in ...
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June 8, 2022
The amazing volunteers who make up Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team have done it again, detecting a basketful of green crabs before they became a truckload. Part of what makes this event particularly significant is that it’s in Hood Canal, a basin of the Salish Sea where green crabs had not previously been detected.
During their regular monthly monitoring in May, the team at Nick’s Lagoon near Seabeck caught ...
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May 31, 2022
The second all-virtual Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (April 26-28) offered everyone with an interest or involvement in the inland waters shared by Washington and British Columbia the chance to connect over a huge range of topics, impacts of last summer’s heat dome, southern resident killer whale status, environmental justice, and of course, our favorite topic – European green crabs. There was a lot on the conference schedule related to green crab, and we wanted to share snapshots ...
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