Besides fish, the most common sea critter that we catch on every single Save the Harbor site is... you guessed it: crabs. At any given time on any given site crabs are caught regularly. At Piers Park Sailing Center crabs are literally all we catch. 90% of the time we catch European green crabs, which are an invasive species from Europe. The green crabs can be easily identified by the five spikes next to their eyes. Green crabs can be somewhat deceiving because not all of them are green, they can even be orange. We teach the children that they are invasive species, and are a huge threat to the survival of the native rock crab. This plays a huge role in the event that we need to sacrifice a green crab for bait when bait is scarce.
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| The children inspect a green crab |
The kids at Piers Park are always enthusiastic about catching crabs. They constantly ask every minute or so to pull up the crab trap. They are always eager to see if there are any crabs in the trap. The children almost always want to be the ones to throw the crab trap back into the water. It is always a pleasure to see that the children are excited time and time again to catch crabs. They are always especially excited to race the crabs into the water at the end of the day!
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| A native rock crab |
-Vinh Tran
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