Scientists set traps to control China’s growing salt crabs

It is classified by conservationists as one of the 100 most invasive alien species in the world. Now a team of scientists is hoping they can find a way to stifle China’s rapidly growing mitten crab population and prevent crabs from growing larger than a 10-inch dinner plate. Claws different from eating us from food. Houses and houses.

The team built and installed Britain’s first Chinese balsam trap at Pode Hole in Lincolnshire to catch predators as they migrate underwater to find mates.

Crab crabs are eating our native meat, said Dr. Paul Clark of the Museum of Natural History, a scientist working on the project. If we start catching these crabs and reducing their population, we may see a change in our environment for the better.

This may include an increase in the local population of dried freshwater fish, which is reported to have declined in Pode Hall, along with small mosquitoes, shrimps and snails.

The Chinese trout crab, so-called because it originated in Southeast Asia, was first seen in the United Kingdom in 1935. Since then, its population has exploded.

Clarks say that females can lay two eggs, and they lay anywhere between 500,000 and a million eggs at a time. There are millions of people in Thames and huge populations in Medway, the Ouse Washes, the Dee, Tyneside and Humber. They eat us outside the house.

He described seeing a crab swallowing snails. The crab treated it like an ice cream cone. It took the snail off the top and pulled the snail out of its shell and ate it.

Similarly, he said, his students shot a crab hitting a tamarind against the underside of a caterpillar, and with its claws it killed the shrimp and ate it.

Research has shown that crabs also eat salmon and trout eggs, which are already under threat in the wild.

Scientists plan to freeze the crabs they catch and then hope to be able to break them to find what they are feeding on. If we can, we will do a DNA analysis on the digested gut.

The unique mailbox lab was designed by Mick Henfrey, head of the Welland and Deepings Internal Drainage Board, and Oscar Jones, an engineering graduate at the University of Sheffield.

Jones came up with the idea after a Chinese Mitten Crab was spotted by a member of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust climbing a dam on Pode Hill. We got together and decided to build a trap, and the environmental agency gave us permission to set it, according to Clark. It’s like an expanding mailbox that crosses a dam with two doors, one facing up and one down. We hope they get up into the mailbox and then up a pipe.

He said the trap would be inspected daily and hoped that if successful, other traps could be installed in rivers such as Dee, the main salmon sanctuary.

The project is running in partnership with the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and the Welland and Deepings Internal Drainage Board.

The public is asked to report sightings of Chinese saltwater crabs online at mittencrabs.org.uk.