David Standridge is on a mission to bring green crabs to more plates. The small, invasive shore crabs are easy to find—they like to hang out in tidal marshes, alongside rocky shores, and on sand flats, but finding fishermen and seafood harvesters willing to catch the crabs for human consumption is a challenge.

“I initially sought them out because they are delicious,” says Standridge, the James Beard Award-winning chef of The Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, CT. But after learning the crabs are invasive, as well as the damage they cause, “it was just one more good reason to use them as much as possible.”

Originally from Europe, commercial ships likely carried the first green crabs to North American shores some time in the 1800s. The non-native species has few predators, reproduces quickly, outcompetes many local species for food and habitat, and, through certain behavior, can destroy saltwater habitats such as eelgrass. They are commonly caught and used for fishing bait.

“I was shocked to find out that they were everywhere,” says Standridge. That is when his quest to find food-grade green crabs began.

Across the United States, chefs including Standridge and Charlie Ray in California, as well as tournaments such as the Emerald Coast Open in Destin, FL are seeking out invasive species for restaurant menus, attempting to put a dent in invasive species such as green crabs, lionfish, and black mustard while building up new income streams for vendors and educating people about the impact of food choices.

Building a supply chain for invasives

Plants and animals are considered invasive if they are non-native to an area and if their presence causes harm to the environment, health of local populations, or to the local economy. Green crabs are just one example, but invasive species range from wild fennel mainly in California to garlic mustard now found throughout much of the US.

Last spring, with the help of Eating with the Ecosystem, a nonprofit that promotes sustaining wild-caught fisheries in New England, Standridge was introduced to fisherman Jason Jarvis, who agreed to put green crabs on his catch list. This opened up a supply chain and made the restaurant the first in Connecticut to use the crabs regularly.

“In Connecticut, we have very little opportunity for people to fish commercially,” says Standrige. “All fish that are regulated under a quota are federally regulated, and the quota is divided by state based on territorial waters. Connecticut has very limited waters, so our piece of the pie is very small. Connecticut fishermen can’t make a living on the limited quotas of fish like fluke, black bass, and scup, so developing markets for lesser used species that don’t have harvest quotas can help them diversify their income streams.”

Since then, with the help of the Green Crab Organization, Standridge and Jarvis have expanded to additional sources for green grabs in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. As the ocean warms in many places along the New England coast, the number of these invasive crabs has been growing, but no one knows quite how big the problem is. The Green Crab Organization is performing harvester surveys to get an estimate of how many crabs are out there, but until then, it is working on getting fishermen licensed to harvest them in Connecticut, and to help get green crabs on the menus of other restaurants.

And it’s not just crabs.

“We still get a lot of ‘is this safe, are they good to eat?’” says Brady Hale, marketing director for the Emerald Coast Open, the largest lionfish tournament in the world. “But most people know about lionfish, and they know they are bad and that they are hurting native species.”

The open was born out of a Florida statewide initiative to raise awareness about lionfish and the importance of their removal. Native to tropical waters in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, the fish have become a massive problem in the Atlantic Ocean, where they have been invading since 1985, posing a threat to the overall ecosystem. The fish, which have powerful stings thanks to their venomous spines, have no known predators and eat basically anything that moves—areas that lionfish heavily invade have seen fish populations reduced by more than 90 percent.

Every year, fishermen and harvesters are encouraged to catch as many lionfish as possible as part of the pre-tournament between February and mid-May, and a three-day-long tournament during mid-May. They can sell or donate the lionfish, with most of them sold to local chefs during the tournament’s end event.

“The demand is huge; the problem is a consistent supply,” says Hale.

According to Hale, that’s not because there aren’t enough lionfish but because it’s not quite lucrative enough for harvesters to catch lionfish full-time, so the supply chain for restaurants isn’t predictable.

It’s not a problem that is unique to seafood. In California, Ray, who grew up foraging for wild mushrooms in Sweden and the United States, spends each spring foraging for Black and Mediterranean Mustards, two of California’s most invasive edible plants. Still, Ray admits that, financially, it doesn’t often make sense for foragers to sell or for chefs to gather independently, as it’s very time-consuming to gather and harvesters aren’t able to sell it for very much.

“Each seed or spore picked is one not being planted,” says Ray.

Ray uses them across her cooking: The Mediterranean mustard goes in salads, where they taste like broccoli, and adds a pop of color and texture, while the Black Mustard, which has a horseradish-like taste, is whipped into butter for steaks or sushi.

Can we eat our way out of the invasive species problem?

While chefs like Ray and Standridge know it’s unlikely we’ll eat enough of the invasive species to eliminate them, they still see it as beneficial.

“Years ago, we might have said we could never eat enough lobster, and now they are basically gone, but also, there is the benefit of eating them over other species that are not so prolific,” says Standridge. “The only way we can manage our blue food resources effectively is to diversify our options.”

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