Italian fishing communities in the north of the country are fighting an invasion of predatory blue crabs which risks jeopardising the economy of whole regions, authorities have said.
The crab, originally from the coast of north and south America, has spread across several lagoon-like locations in Italy over the past year, preying on local shellfish and posing a threat to the country’s role as one of the world’s leading clam producers.
“We need people in Rome to understand that this disaster is putting at risk the lives of thousands of families and businesses,” said the governor of Emilia-Romagna, Stefano Bonaccini, after a summit on Monday.
“This invasion risks destroying an economy which not only provides a livelihood for a community, but which is an Italian and European excellence, together with other identity products of this region like Parma ham or Parmigiano.”
Fishing communities in the affected regions have been advised to capture as many blue crabs as they can in at attempt to control their population. In the Po River delta, however, such efforts have proven largely ineffective.
About 326 tonnes of the aggressive invasive species have already been caught in Veneto this year, including 84 tonnes in Scardovari and 29 tonnes in Pila just in August.
According to the fishers’ association Fedagripesca-Confcooperative, the crabs have already caused economic damage put at about €100m (£85m) in Italy as a whole, and have devoured up to 90% of young clams in the Po delta, causing severe damage to future production.
The governor of Veneto, Luca Zaia, showed reporters two live blue crabs during a press conference last week, claiming they are “breaking everything and causing disasters’’.
The blue crab is a highly important food source for its natural predators such as rays and sharks in its natural habitat, but in the north of Italy it has no predators and is reproducing without limits and destroying the local fauna.
The farming lobby Coldiretti described the crabs’ presence as a “natural calamity” which threatened the survival of 3,000 family firms in the Po delta, and called for government support.
Rome has allocated €2.9m for fishing cooperatives to control the crabs’ population, but the government is also pursuing a parallel strategy: encouraging Italians to introduce the crabs into their menus. Fishers have started to sell them at €8 a kilo to private individuals or supermarkets.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, posted a photo of herself and her brother in law, the agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida, eating blue crabs at their summer holiday farmhouse in Puglia at the weekend.
In a separate video, Lollobrigida is holding a blue crab next to a boiling pot, while explaining the importance of cooking it to fight the invasion.
Not everyone, however, agrees with the strategy. In a statement released on Monday, Gianmichele Passarini, the president of Cia-Agricoltori Italiani Veneto, said: “Fighting such a widespread emergency that is causing thousands of fishermen to struggle with a cookbook is wrong. We need a serious programme to control the blue crab in our waters. It is a mere illusion to hope to eradicate this species in the short to medium term.”
According to experts, the blue crab has made its way to Italy as a result of shipping and international trade, after being inadvertently loaded onto large cargo vessels when they collect ballast water, which they use to ensure their stability. This water, which is often not filtered before being discharged into the Mediterranean, has allowed the crabs to invade new areas.
