Teeming Army Of Stalin's Crabs May Reach As Far S. As Gibraltar

[hatrack]

Legions of giant crabs clawing their way along the bottom of the Barents Sea are proving a godsend to the few fishermen authorized to catch the lucrative crustacean, but some fear the crabs are threatening the sea's fragile ecosystem.

The Kamchatka crab, also known as red king crab or Alaskan crab, was introduced into the Barents by the Soviets in the 1960s -- some 30 years after a first, failed attempt by Stalin -- in a bid to bolster Russia's food supplies. Now, the species is spreading like wildfire along the northern coasts of Russia and Norway and will continue to spread as far as Gibraltar, the southern tip of the European continent, predicted Yuri Illarionovich Orlov, the Russian biologist who first implanted the animal in the Barents Sea. "But that will take 150 years," he said.

The crabs weigh up to 12 kilos (26 pounds) and measure up to two meters (6.5 feet) from pincher to pincher. While they remain far from Europe's tourist beaches for the time being, their impact on the environment is already a major cause for concern in the Arctic. The crabs eat anything they can find on the seabed -- fish eggs, snails, clams, shellfish and dead fish. And to make matters worse, they reproduce at an exceptionally fast rate. A female crab can lay 500,000 eggs at a time, of which one or two percent will become crabs.

"We can't use our nets or our deep lines anymore because the crabs claw them and ruin them," complains Arnulf Bertheussen, a fisherman in the Norwegian Arctic village of Honningsvaag. "They devour everything in their path. They are creating a desert: the seabeds, they're the Sahara," Bertheussen laments aboard his trawler Goldfish.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2006/060524104638.s7bqv52d.html

[zanne]

1. Why hasn't anybody written a book about this?

Let's see... It could be set in a small Maine fishing village...first a small dog, then a small child disappears...

[benddem]

8. start now

I smell bestseller.

[benburch]

2. The desertification should be self-limiting.

If the predator exhausts the prey, the predator dies of starvation, and the prey returns. Should be cyclic.

[hatrack]

3. Ah, but they'll just migrate south, those ravening hordes!

Stalin wins at last!

[moggie]

4. What is the pentagon doing about this?

Those Russkies! We cannot allow a crab gap!

[ClintonTyree]

5. Good news for seafood lovers.........

bad news for Alaska's Bearing Sea fishermen. They should start fishing them immediately if they want to head off major environmental trouble but that would drive the cost of King Crab down. It's tough enough making a living in the Bearing Sea as it is.

[Solo_in_MD]

7. The Deadlest Catch on the Discovery Channel

Is one of my favorite shows, and crab my best liked dinner

[benburch]

9. Knowing the sorts of things dumped by the Soviets in the Arctic Ocean...

...like spent reactors and such, I'm not sure I would eat them!

[Dr.Phool]

6. Save the ecosystem. Break out the melted butter!!!!