Green Crab Monitoring

Header image courtesy of Zach Moore/USFWS

October 25, 2017

At the end of August, Crab Team received an email on our “tip line” from a beachwalker who had spotted a European green crab near Hobuck Beach in Makah Bay. The photograph submitted enabled us to immediately confirm the sighting, which was a new record for that area. The crab was located on Makah tribal land, and the Makah subsequently undertook a rapid assessment trapping effort to determine the extent of any green ...

October 12, 2017

Following the recent capture of a single European green crab at Lagoon Point, on Whidbey Island (read more), Crab Team staff and volunteers, in consultation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), headed back to the site last week to carry out assessment trapping as an expanded early detection effort. Over three days, the group conducted 114 trap sets, and captured only one additional European green crab.

This type of assessment trapping is the first step ...

September 19, 2017

Crab Team volunteers at Lagoon Point, on the west side of Whidbey Island, captured a single European green crab in their final sampling effort for this year. The male crab, at 47 mm across the carapace, is most likely a 2017 crab, part of this year’s cohort. A team of four volunteers from the island has been monitoring the site, April through September, for the past two years, but this is the first evidence of European green crab ...

August 23, 2017

A single European green crab was captured in Sequim Bay last week by Neil Harrington, an Environmental Biologist with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. Since the discovery of a small population of green crab in nearby Dungeness Bay this April, Harrington has been steadily trapping his way around Sequim Bay on the lookout for more of the invaders. Intensive trapping by Harrington and coworkers over the last week did not capture any additional European green crab, suggesting that ...

August 14, 2017

It looks as though Crab Team, now a network of 52 early detection sites monitored by more than 200 volunteers and several dozen staff from partner agencies, might have another ally out in the mud. Last week, during regular monthly sampling in a channel at the south end of Padilla Bay, Lindsey Parker found a European green crab. This was definitely notable, because we would rather not find any green crab, but not entirely surprising because the monitoring ...

July 20, 2017

Trapping to remove invasive European green crab from Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge is in its 15th week since the initial discovery of four individuals during April of this year. As of last Friday, partners with US Fish and Wildlife Service (UWFWS) and Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) had captured and removed 89 crabs from Dungeness Bay. Since our last update a few weeks ago, a few notable developments have ...