The invasive European green crabs taking a toll on New England lobster breeding grounds pose a double-edged threat to Maine’s favorite crustacean.
While marine biologists are doing their best to kill off the crabs, turns out the body oils from the grabby creatures are a way to disguise monkfish as lobster.
Judging from resourceful New England chefs, cooks can make monkfish take like lobster by poaching it in green-crab oil.
The troublesome crabs are far better dead than alive according to fisheries experts who consider those crabs a harmful invasive species.
The weird thing about invasive species, whether they be plants or animals, is they never really go away for good.
The monkfish disguise is being touted by non-traditionalists as “sustainable seafood” – which makes the scam environmentally-correct, as well as downright dishonest.
Belfast restaurant “Must Be Nice Lobster” uses green-crab stock in its “creamy lobster chowder.”
Elsewhere in New England, James Beard Chef David Stanbridge in Mystic, Connecticut “uses the oil from the green crab, a non-native species, to poach monkfish and create a tasty, more affordable version of lobster,” reports Yahoo.
Clearly green crabs crawling around the North Atlantic better be looking for cover, lest they end up on a dinner plate wearing a lobster bib.
Stanbridge’s menu even includes what is called “Poor Man’s lobster roll,” made with, you guessed it, monkfish seasoned with green crab oil.
So this green-crab thing is catching, even more than cases of the, well – nevermind.
In Maine green crabs were first spotted in Casco Bay in the early 1900s after moving northward from Massachusetts where they were introduced a century before, according to GreenCrab.org.
“In recent years, green crabs have become Maine’s most common crab species, wreaking havoc on some of the state’s most valuable fisheries and vulnerable ecosystems,” according to Mary Parks, the organization’s founder.
The crabs like to eat eelgrass, a major nutrient source for juvenile lobsters and other marine life.
Another way to lure green crabs is humor them by explaining they make good compost, which is how the Wolfe’s Neck Center in Freeport uses them.
Meanwhile, news of the novel ways of getting rid of an invasive species – in the frying pan as a step-cousin to lobster, in your lobster chowdah or in your compost pile – comes in the wake of a new book about crises in the lobster industry.
So green crabs now apparently may also be a secret potion of choice to help rescue lobsters from certain would-be death by trapping.
“The Lobster Trap: The Global Fight for a Seafood on the Brink,” is a new book by Greg Mercer about problems in the lobster industry, including political battles over who gets to fish where.
“The great lobster boom that began in the 1990s has also led to violent fights over who has the right to catch this valuable seafood,” Mercer says. “Now overfishing, trade wars, and climate change are threatening the future of this fishery.”
