Crab Team News

Invasive Green Crabs Found at Drayton Harbor

(Photo: A male, 38.5mm European green crab, one of the 17 captured at Drayton Harbor last month.)  

October 8, 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Blaine, WA — As part of an early-detection partnership, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the Washington Sea Grant (WSG) Crab Team found evidence of European green crabs (Carcinus maenas) in Drayton Harbor during regular monitoring, and then trapped 17 green crabs during a two-day rapid response in ...

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Green Crab Trappers Get Skunked at Pysht

July 17, 2019

Drenched and muddy, but greatly relieved, we packed all 150 traps out of the Pysht estuary this morning. Over the past three days, in partnership with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Crab Team staff participated in an expanded assessment trapping effort that resulted in roughly 300 trap sets, and, most importantly, zero detections of European green crabs.

The Pysht river estuary is a huge and beautiful marsh, with miles of muddy channels, ...

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Additional Green Crabs Captured in Whatcom County

  July 8, 2019

Last week was a busy one for European green crab monitoring on Washington’s inland shorelines. Two expanded trapping efforts were taking place simultaneously at the beginning of the week, with mixed results. The first, a trapping effort in Whatcom County conducted by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Technician, Chelsey Buffington, turned up three European green crab in Chuckanut Bay. WDFW conducted this trapping in response to the recent discovery of a green ...

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Green Crab Trapping Resumes in the Salish Sea

May 13, 2019

The return of spring means trapping season for green crab is now under way. In April, WSG Crab Team resumed early detection trapping across the monitoring network along Washington’s inland shorelines. We’re pleased to share that Crab Team has received funding to continue this work for the next biennium (July 2019 – June 2021) in the Washington State budget. To date, the program was funded primarily through the Puget Sound Marine and Nearshore Grant Program (US Environmental ...

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WSG Crab Team Trip to Makah Bay

August 8th, 2018

Last month, Washington Sea Grant Crab Team staff traveled to the Makah Reservation in the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula to participate in the Makah Tribe’s European green crab trapping efforts. As you might remember, in October of 2017, we reported the very first sighting of a green crab in Makah Bay. Since then, Adrianne Akmajian, Marine Ecologist for the Makah Tribe, has been leading extensive trapping efforts to better understand and manage the population ...

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Building Capacity to Protect the Salish Sea From European Green Crab

 July 5th, 2018

As we wrote last week, the first half of this monitoring season has seen several new detections of European green crab, but as green crab appear to be ramping up, so is the group of humans ready to control them. WSG Crab Team is now a project with five team members (including two full time staff), more than 200 volunteers, and 25 partner staff from agencies and tribes. That’s a lot of people ...

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Single Green Crab Found During Follow-Up Assessment on Whidbey Island

June 11, 2018

Last week, WSG Crab Team spent three full days in the mud at Lagoon Point on Whidbey Island. After two European green crab were discovered there last year, one during regular volunteer monitoring and a second during the subsequent rapid assessment, Crab Team HQ decided another multi-day trapping assessment could help us better understand the status of green crab at the site. ...

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Crab Team Highlights from the 2018 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference – Part 2

April 27, 2018

Yesterday’s blog post covered the highlights from the first green crab special session at the 2018 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference. Today, we’ll break down the second special session that focused on management of invasive European green crab and provide some reflections on the conference as a whole.

Session 2: “Addressing European Green Crab in the Salish Sea: A Rare Opportunity for International Collaboration Toward Effective Aquatic Invasive Species Control and Prevention”

During the second ...

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Crab Team Highlights from the 2018 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference – Part 1

April 26, 2018

Between April 4th and 6th hundreds of scientists, managers, and policymakers descended upon the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle for the 2018 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference. From salmon and orcas to microplastics and harmful algal blooms, presentations at the conference covered an incredibly wide variety of topics — including invasive European green crab. WSG Crab Team collaborated with Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to host two ...

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Where are the European Green Crab in the Salish Sea Coming From?

April 25, 2018

Finding a few isolated pockets of invasive European green crab in Washington’s Salish Sea over the past two years indicates the early stages of a possible range expansion. Certainly, it is the goal of WSG Crab Team and management to protect shorelines from the damage this crab has done in other parts of the world. In order to do that, it’s important not only to know where green crab are found – and to try to remove them ...

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Documenting the European Green Crab Range Expansion

(Header photo: Allen Pleus, Aquatic Invasive Species Unit Lead for Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife with one of the green crab captured in Padilla Bay during the collaborative assessment trapping effort in 2016.)

February 6, 2018

The very first publication by Crab Team was just released in Management of Biological Invasions this week (you can read it), and while there are six authors listed, it was a contribution made by hundreds. The paper had two ...

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Crab Team Welcomes Program Assistant

Header photo: assisting with the Cape Eleuthera Institute’s green sea turtle research.

  January 17, 2018

Hello, Crab Team community! My name is Kelly Martin and I am thrilled to be joining the Washington Sea Grant Crab Team this year as a program assistant! I am currently a first-year graduate student at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs interested in bridging the gaps between scientists, policy makers, and the general public. ...

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Crab Team Takes Willapa Bay by Storm: Part 3

November 15, 2016

This series of three posts was originally written in August, but was pre-empted by the news of European green crab captures on San Juan Island and in Padilla Bay. Better late than never, here are our field notes on green crab trapping in Willapa Bay during August of this year. Read part 1 and part 2

Day 4: August 17 – wrapping up

Because we were camping literally right next to the marsh we were trapping, we got to sleep in ...

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Crab Team Takes Willapa Bay by Storm: Part 2

November 8, 2016

This series of three posts was originally written in August, but was pre-empted by the news of European green crab captures on San Juan Island and in Padilla Bay. Better late than never, here are our field notes on green crab trapping in Willapa Bay during August of this year. Read part 1.

Day 2: August 15

Up at 5 am to catch first light at 6. Back to Oysterville to pick up the traps – no green crabs, but a ...

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