Crab Team Updates

September 13, 2022 by Ellika Cairns in Blog Views 1468

Over the past month, our Crab Team volunteers have had the opportunity to put their crab ID skills to the test. They’ve been catching some species we hadn’t previously found in our traps!

Our Furry Creek team caught two graceful crabs, as well as a tiny hermit crab, and our Squamish Estuary team caught several shiner perch. The graceful crabs were especially neat – they’re much more docile and easy to handle in comparison to the Dungeness crabs that we’ve also been catching.

How do they identify all these unique marine creatures? Our volunteers have received training specifically for this, and have Crab category ID sheets that they can reference in-field. We’ve also used the Whelks to Whales book occasionally, which is fantastic for a wide variety of marine creatures. And if we’re still uncertain after exhausting all those resources, thankfully we have an experienced team at Fisheries and Oceans Canada to ask for help.

Here’s what we’ve caught (and released) from March to the end of August:

36 crangon
29 sea gooseberries
309 moon jelly fish
24 juvenile dungeness crabs
52 native shore crabs
2 graceful crabs
1 hermit crab
27 shiner perch
1 saddleback gunnel
3 stickleback
80 sculpins

We’ve found no European Green Crab in Howe Sound (so far!)

If you think you’ve spotted a European Green Crab, please:

Take a picture
Note down your location (GPS coordinates)
Send an email with info / photos to AISPACIFIC@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

A few of the crabs that we may find in Howe Sound include:

European Green Crab (INVASIVE)
Dungeness Crab (NATIVE)
Shore Crabs (NATIVE)
Graceful Crab (NATIVE)
Red Rock Crab (NATIVE)
Northern Kelp Crab (NATIVE)

Check out the Crab ID Guide for some quick tips on distinguishing features for each of these crabs.

The number of spines that a crab has is especially informative. The European Green Crab is the only one that has 5 spines on each sides of it’s eyes.

Despite submitting many grant requests and funding applications, we are finding it difficult to secure long-term funding for this program. If you would like to help protect Howe Sound from European Green Crab, and support our efforts with a donation (any amount is appreciated!), please head over to https://ssisc.ca/donate.

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 last year because early detection and rapid response (EDRR) are extremely important in fighting the threat of invasive species, and a European Green Crab infestation could significantly threaten the unique marine wildlife in Howe Sound and the Squamish River Estuary.

You can learn more about Crab Team here.