European Green Crab Sampling Resumes
Our monitoring program for invasive European Green Crab in Howe Sound is back (cue celebratory snappy hands)!
Our 3 teams of volunteers began sampling in early June, and will continue to monitor at their sites once a month until the end of September. They deploy both Minnow and Prawn traps, using frozen herring as bait. These traps are set to soak for 24 hours, and then volunteers return to identify and release their contents. If they were to find a European Green Crab, they have a scientific license that permits them to keep it and would immediately notify Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO).
This year’s sites are:
- Furry Creek
- Mamaquam Blind Channel
- Cattermole Slough
Highlights from our sampling sets in June:
- Our 12 volunteers were provided site orientation and training from our Community Science Program Coordinator (Ellika). The volunteers this year all come from different backgrounds and levels of experience – some have never picked up a crab before, one has written a research paper on crabs, a few of them are open-water swimmers, and others are returning Crab Team volunteers. The variety of experiences means that everyone has something to learn from one another.
- We were joined by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) staff for our first sampling set in Furry Creek. They provided us with some helpful tips & tricks, and we showed them around our 3 sites.
- Both the Furry Creek and Mamquam Blind Channel teams caught native crabs this month. This gave them an awesome opportunity to practice picking up and identifying crabs. Dungeness crabs are particularly feisty in comparison to shore crabs, so technique is important if you don’t want to get snipped.
- We caught (and released) these species in June:
- 23 sculpins
- 1 shore crab
- 8 Dungeness crabs
- 3 crangon
- 4 sea gooseberries
- We’ve found no European Green Crab (so far!)
Why are we monitoring for this invasive crab?
To-date, there have been no detections of European Green Crab in Howe Sound, but they have been found as close as Salt Spring Island, San Juan Island (in the US), Boundary Bay (just south of Vancouver), along the Sunshine Coast, and all over the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
We launched our monitoring program in 2021 to enable early detection of this invasive species if it arrives in Howe Sound. Continuing this long-term monitoring program is important because the arrival and establishment of European Green Crab could significantly threaten the unique marine wildlife in Howe Sound and the Squamish River Estuary.
You can learn more about Crab Team here.
Have we ‘pinched’ your interest? Here’s some useful links:
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