Friend or Foe? Chefs cook blue crabs threatening Italy's marine ecosystem

(20 Aug 2023) ITALY BLUE CRABS SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS RESTRICTION SUMMARY : LENGTH: 6:55 ASSOCIATED PRESS Orbetello, Grosseto Italy - 14 August 2023 1. Various underwater shots of blue crabs inside a fishing net used to catch eels 2. Zoom in of a fishing net being pulled out of the water with a blue crab inside 3. Fishing net with eels inside, tipped into a large bucket on the boat 4. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Marco Giudici, 62-year-old fisherman: “He (the blue crab) is aggressive, he is fast, he is an animal of unacceptable intelligence. We fight this blue crab, but he is stronger than us because there are so many of them. We, with our fishing efforts, can't manage to fight them. Then the winter is yet to come, and we’ll have fixed fishing nets and if they (the blue crabs) come in they will destroy all our work, the important work. The eel fishing in the winter is important for us and we don’t know yet what will happen, but we can predict it.” 5. Close of a crab holding an eel in its claws 6. Various of the fisherman moving the blue crabs from the white bucket where the eels are to the blue bucket 7. Various of blue crabs inside the bucket 8. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Pierluigi Piro, president of 'La Peschereccia', a fishermen's cooperative in Orbetello: “Last year we were catching 150-200 (crabs), while this year we’ve caught 25 quintals (a unit of weight equal to 100 kg), but only since the second week of July, so it’s a rather unusual scenario. From an environmental point of view, blue crabs are a real problem because they attack the juvenile fish, the eels, and they interrupt the food cycle of the fish because they eat clams, mussels, and oysters. Unfortunately, they are growing exponentially because they seem to have found their ideal habitat in the Orbetello lagoon." 9. Crabs being moved from a large bucket to a tank where there are other crabs caught previously 10. Close of the blue crabs being piled up 11. Blue crabs being put into crates to be sold later 12. Close of blue crabs 13. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Sergio Amenta, fisherman and marketing manager of 'La Peschereccia', a fishermen's cooperative in Orbetello: “We are very worried, very worried, because we are going into the eel season, and these animals will eat all of our ‘lavorieri’ (type of fishing net), all of our gear, all of our ‘inganni’ (type of fishing net). They will eat them directly, because the king blue crab is a swimmer crab, so it is not a crab that just walks on the bottom, but swims, so anything it finds in mid-water it will attack.” 14. Underwater shot of blue crabs inside a fishing net 15. Fishing net being pulled out of the water 16. Water surface 17. Underwater shot of a blue crab inside a fishing net 18. SOUNDBITE (Italian), Enrica Franchi, marine biologist at the University of Siena: "The Callinectes Sapidus is an alien species, so it is not typical of our seas, it certainly emits more than half a million eggs (per year) and is a very aggressive species. In our seas it has no competitors other than man and therefore causes major damage to the indigenous species, in particular polychaetes, amphipods and small fish, and reproduces, creating an imbalance in the indigenous fauna.” 19. Blue crab being dropped from a fishing net into a bucket with eels in it 20. Pan right of a large bucket with freshly caught blue crabs being emptied into a tank with other blue crabs inside 21. Pan of crates filled with blue crabs 22. Tilt up of blue crabs being crammed into a crate 23. Close of eggs (orange) attached to the body of a blue crab 25. Close of crab being cut for cooking LEAD IN: Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...