Fisheries union, students launch attack on invasive green crab in Placentia Bay, N.L.

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

The St. John’s Telegram

For the past month, the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ (FFAW) union has been coordinating a clean-up of green crab in Placentia Bay, N.L.

In a news release, the union says its efforts – with the aid of funding from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture – included chartering four fishing vessels to clean up the area known as the bottom of Placentia Bay.

To date during the project, about 300,000 green crab have been captured.

According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ website, green crab are invading Canada’s coasts, ruining prime habitats for shellfish stocks and nurseries for juvenile fish by its burrowing and eating just about everything. A native species of Europe and northern Africa, it has hitchhiked to new locations around the world in ships’ ballast waters and on ocean currents, fishing gear and pleasure boats. It has been a pest in the Maritimes from as early as the 1950s, and since the late 1990s on the West Coast.

In August 2007, green crabs were reported for the first time in Newfoundland, at North Harbour in Placentia Bay, by sharp-eyed fisherman Earl Johnson.

The FFAW says that next week, Swift Current Academy students from Grades 7-12 will converge on the beaches of North Harbour to assist with the clean up of green crab and to learn about the dangerous invasive species that is decimating the local ecosystem.

FFAW secretary-treasurer David Decker said the union, harvesters, provincial and federal fisheries, and the students of the area have all been involved in trying to do something about this growing problem.

“Basically everyone has been involved except those who should be. It is time for the industrial users in Placentia Bay, including the oil refinery, to step up to the plate here before it is too late and the fisheries and the ecosystem in the bay are damaged beyond repair devastating the livelihoods of harvesters and hundreds of enterprises,” said Decker.