Carcinus maenas is a common littoral crab. It is known by different names around the world. In the British Isles, it is generally referred to as the shore crab, or green shore crab. In North America and South Africa, it bears the name European green crab.
C. maenas is a widespread invasive species, listed among the 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species. It is native to the north-east Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea, but has colonised similar habitats in Australia, South Africa, South America and both Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America. It grows to a carapace width of.mw-parser-output.frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output.frac.num,.mw-parser-output.frac.den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output.frac.den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output.sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);clip-path:polygon(0px 0px,0px 0px,0px 0px);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}90 mm (3+1⁄2 in), and feeds on a variety of mollusks, worms, and small crustaceans, affecting a number of fisheries. Its successful dispersal has occurred by a variety of mechanisms, such as on ships' hulls, sea planes, packing materials, and bivalves moved for aquaculture.
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ScavengerScavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators. While sc...
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OviparousOviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
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starts withC. maenas has a carapace up to 60 mm (2.4 in) long and 90 mm (3.5 in) wide, but can be larger outside its native range, reaching 100 mm (3.9 in) wide in British Columbia. The carapace has five short teeth along the rim behind each eye, and three undulations between the eyes. The undulations, which protrude beyond the eyes, are the simplest means of distinguishing C. maenas from the closely related C. aestuarii, which can also be an invasive species. In C. aestuarii, the carapace lacks any bumps and extends forward beyond the eyes. Another characteristic for distinguishing the two species is the form of the first and second pleopods (collectively the gonopods), which are straight and parallel in C. aestuarii, but curve outwards in C. maenas.
The colour of C. maenas varies greatly, from green to brown, grey, or red. This variation has a genetic component, but is largely due to local environmental factors. In particular, individuals which delay moulting become red-coloured rather than green. Red individuals are stronger and more aggressive, but are less tolerant of environmental stresses, such as low salinity or hypoxia. Juvenile crabs on average display greater patterning than adults.
C. maenas is native to European and North African coasts as far as the Baltic Sea in the east, and Iceland and Central Norway in the north, and is one of the most common crabs throughout much of its range. In the Mediterranean Sea, it is replaced by the closely related species C. aestuarii.C. maenas was first observed on the east coast of North America in Massachusetts in 1817, and may now be found from South Carolina northwards; by 2007, this species had extended its range northwards to Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. In 1989, the species was found in San Francisco Bay, California, on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Until 1993, it was not able to extend its range, but reached Oregon in 1997, Washington in 1998, and British Columbia in 1999, thus extending its range by 750 km (470 mi) in 10 years. As of December 2020 they were just south of Alaska, and were expected to enter Alaska next. By 2003, C. maenas had extended to South America with specimens discovered in Patagonia.
In Australia, C. maenas was first reported "in the late 1800s" in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, although the species was probably introduced as early as the 1850s. It has since spread along the south-eastern and south-western seaboards, reaching New South Wales in 1971, South Australia in 1976 and Tasmania in 1993. One specimen was found in Western Australia in 1965, but no further discoveries have been reported in the area since.
C. maenas first reached South Africa in 1983, in the Table Docks area near Cape Town. Since then, it has spread at least as far as Saldanha Bay in the north and Camps Bay in the south, over 100 km (62 mi) apart.
Appearances of C. maenas have been recorded in Brazil, Panama, Hawaii, Madagascar, the Red Sea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar; however, these have not resulted in invasions, but remain isolated findings. Japan has been invaded by a related crab, either C. aestuarii or a hybrid of C. aestuarii and C. maenas.
Based on the ecological conditions, C. maenas could eventually extend its range to colonise the Pacific Coast of North America from Baja California to Alaska. Similar ecological conditions are to be found on many of the world's coasts, with the only large potential area not to have been invaded yet being New Zealand; the New Zealand government has taken action, including the release of a Marine Pest Guide in an effort to prevent colonisation by C. maenas.
In 2019 C. maenas was first found in Lummi Bay, Lummi Indian Reservation, Whatcom County, Washington, USA. The Nation began trapping and removing the crabs in an effort to get rid of them. Then in 2020 hundreds were found in traps, and it became clear that more intensive trapping will be necessary to keep their numbers down. Eradication will not be possible.
Over a 19-year study concluding in 2020, Oregon's Coos Bay was found to have an established and increasing population.
While in 2020 less than 3,000 were trapped, trapping yielded >79,000 in 2021. This led the Lummi Indian Business Council to declare a disaster in November 2021 and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to request emergency funding from the Governor.
C. maenas can live in all types of protected and semiprotected marine and estuarine habitats, including those with mud, sand, or rock substrates, submerged aquatic vegetation, and emergent marsh, although soft bottoms are preferred. C. maenas is euryhaline, meaning that it can tolerate a wide range of salinities (from 4 to 52 ‰), and survive in temperatures of 0 to 30 °C (32 to 86 °F). The wide salinity range allows C. maenas to survive in the lower salinities found in estuaries, and the wide temperature range allows it to survive in extremely cold climates beneath the ice in winter. A molecular biological study using the COI gene found genetic differentiation between the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay, and even more strongly between the populations in Iceland and the Faroe Islands and those elsewhere. This suggests that C. maenas is unable to cross deeper water.
Females can produce up to 185,000 eggs, and larvae develop offshore in several stages before their final moult to juvenile crabs in the intertidal zone. Young crabs live among seaweeds and seagrasses, such as Posidonia oceanica, until they reach adulthood.
C. maenas has the ability to disperse by a variety of mechanisms, including ballast water, ships' hulls, packing materials (seaweeds) used to ship live marine organisms, bivalves moved for aquaculture, rafting, migration of crab larvae on ocean currents, and the movement of submerged aquatic vegetation for coastal zone management initiatives. C. maenas dispersed in Australia mainly by rare long-distance events, possibly caused by human actions.
C. maenas is a predator, feeding on many organisms, particularly bivalve molluscs (such as clams – up to 40 1⁄2 inch (13 mm) clams per day, oysters, and mussels), polychaetes, and small crustaceans – including other crabs up to their own size. They are primarily diurnal, although activity also depends on the tide, and crabs can be active at any time of day. In California, preferential predation of C. maenas on native clams (Nutricola spp.) resulted in the decline of the native clams and an increase of a previously introduced clam (the amethyst gem clam, Gemma gemma), although C. maenas also voraciously preys on introduced clams such as Potamocorbula amurensis. The soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria) is a preferred prey species of C. maenas. Consequently, it has been implicated in the destruction of the soft-shell clam fisheries on the east coast of the United States and Canada, and the reduction of populations of other commercially important bivalves (such as scallops, Argopecten irradians, and northern quahogs, Mercenaria mercenaria). The prey of C. maenas includes the young of bivalves and fish, although the effect of its predation on winter flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus is minimal. C. maenas can, however, have substantial negative impacts on local commercial and recreational fisheries, by preying on the young of species, such as oysters (adults' shells are too tough for C. maenas to crack) and the Dungeness crab, or competing with them for resources and eating the Zostera marina that Dungeness and juvenile salmon depend upon for habitat. Colder water temperatures reduce overall feeding rates of C. maenas.
To protect itself against predators, C. maenas uses different camouflage strategies depending on their habitat: crabs in mudflats try to resemble their surroundings with colours similar to the mud while crabs in rock pool use disruptive coloration.
