April 23, 2026
Shellfish growers have long been stewards of Washington’s rich marine waters. After all, the industry as a whole relies on healthy marine ecosystems. So it probably comes as no surprise that shellfish growers have been partners in efforts to control invasive European green ...
January 26, 2026
Washington’s Pacific coast has a different European green crab history than the Salish Sea and faces different conditions, so here we share a summary of 2025 green crab status and trends focused on sites within coastal estuaries. This summary is based on data collected by all trapping groups working in this geography (see the footer for a list).
Where they are found in Washington green crabs are roughly 10 times more abundant at ...
Read MoreJanuary 5, 2026
Last year continued Washington’s trend of increasing green crab activity, both in the number of crabs trapped and in the growing network of people working to find and remove them. In early December, Washington Sea Grant (WSG) brought together trappers from across the state to compare notes from the 2025 season – our biggest Trappers’ Summit to date! We’re sharing highlights from those conversations in two annual summary posts. This post focuses on ...
May 7, 2024
Continuing our summary of 2023 green crab status and trends
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.
Read More
7
MAY
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
December 6, 2021
The recent report by the Lummi Nation of more than 70,000 European green crabs captured this year has many wondering what this could mean for efforts to prevent green crabs from establishing in the Salish Sea. This number certainly indicates that the population of green crabs within the sea pond on the Lummi Reservation has grown exponentially since their first detection in 2019 (Mueller and Jefferson, ...
Read More
December 23, 2020
One of the big successes this year was the launch of a local removal effort in Drayton Harbor. In spite of COVID, in spite of wildfire smoke, in spite of everything that 2020 had to throw at us, the collaborative management team was able to make great strides in trapping the Washington’s northernmost green crab hotspot. From May through October of this year, the crew was out trapping, trapping, and … trapping, with two ...
Read More
December 16, 2020
As we hang up our hip boots to dry until next season (right next to the holiday lights, of course), it’s a good time to stop and reflect on what we were able to accomplish in a fleeting field season that was truly unlike any before it. In addition to our continued early detection monitoring in the Salish Sea, we had ambitious goals to design and launch a broad geographic ...
Read More
November 23, 2020
Trapping for European green crab has mostly concluded for the 2020 season, enabling us to take stock of all that was accomplished this year and provide some status updates on green crab. The obstacles this year were considerable, but volunteers and managers were more than equal to the task, masking, attesting, and distancing, not to mention riding out wildfire smoke, to trap for green crabs. The next few posts will provide updates on what was accomplished and what ...
Read More
August 30, 2020
In 2016, when invasive European green crabs were first found on San Juan Island, media coverage left a lot of folks on Washington’s coast scratching their heads. Why the sudden concern? After all, green crabs were first detected in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor several decades ago, starting in 1998, and had mostly disappeared. Shellfish growers might see them on occasion, but they were no longer considered the looming threat perceived at the turn ...
Read More
July 3, 2020
Removal of European green crab in Drayton Harbor is now underway, thanks to the collaborative efforts of WSG, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the Northwest Straits Commission (NWSC) and other stakeholders. This is the second of two posts on efforts to date. Part 1 covered the development of the management team.
Removal trapping of European green crabs at Drayton Harbor officially began on May 26. Since then, staff with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) ...
Read More
July 2, 2020
Removal of European green crab in Drayton Harbor is now underway, thanks to the collaborative efforts of WSG, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the Northwest Straits Commission (NWSC) and many other partners and stakeholders. This is the first of two posts on efforts to date.
Starting last fall, following the detection of green crabs in Drayton Harbor, in Blaine, first as molts, then in two assessment trapping efforts, WSG and WDFW began developing a collaborative ...
Read More