Free Republic

For the first time, crews in Alaska won’t be braving ice and sea spray to pluck snow crab from the Bering Sea. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the snow crab season earlier this week after a catastrophic population crash of the sizable crustaceans. The red king crab season was canceled for the second year in a row, making it a two-pronged disaster for Alaska’s economy and for those whose livelihoods rely on crab. “It’s going to be life-changing, if not career-ending, for people,” said Dean Gribble Sr., a 63-year-old crab boat captain who has fished for “opies”...

...Antarctic clams, snails and brittle stars, because of adaptation to their environment, have soft shells and have never had to fight shell-crushing predators. “You can take an Antarctic clam and crush it with your hands,” McClintock said. They could be the main prey for these crabs, he said. Loss of unique mollusks could jeopardize organisms with disease-fighting compounds, McClintock said. Sea squirts, for example, produce an agent that fights skin cancer. If the crabs eat them, it could bring McClintock’s research with that organism to a halt...

Stalin's last army: hordes of gigantic crabs on their way to invade Europe - By Julius Strauss in Kirkenes, Northern Norway Millions of giant Pacific crabs, whose ancestors were brought to Europe by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, are marching south along Norway's coast, devouring everything in their path.The monster crabs, which can weigh up to 25lb and have a claw-span of more than three feet, are proving so resilient that scientists fear they could end up as far south as Gibraltar. Energised by a mysterious population explosion a decade ago, whole armies of the crustaceans - known as the...