Friend or Foe? Chefs cook blue crabs threatening Italy's marine ecosystem

(20 Aug 2023)
ITALY BLUE CRABS
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
RESTRICTION SUMMARY :
LENGTH: 6:55
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Orbetello, Grosseto Italy - 14 August 2023
1. Various underwater shots of blue crabs inside a fishing net used to catch eels
2. Zoom in of a fishing net being pulled out of the water with a blue crab inside
3. Fishing net with eels inside, tipped into a large bucket on the boat
4. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Marco Giudici, 62-year-old fisherman:
“He (the blue crab) is aggressive, he is fast, he is an animal of unacceptable intelligence. We fight this blue crab, but he is stronger than us because there are so many of them. We, with our fishing efforts, can't manage to fight them. Then the winter is yet to come, and we’ll have fixed fishing nets and if they (the blue crabs) come in they will destroy all our work, the important work. The eel fishing in the winter is important for us and we don’t know yet what will happen, but we can predict it.”
5. Close of a crab holding an eel in its claws
6. Various of the fisherman moving the blue crabs from the white bucket where the eels are to the blue bucket
7. Various of blue crabs inside the bucket
8. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Pierluigi Piro, president of 'La Peschereccia', a fishermen's cooperative in Orbetello:
“Last year we were catching 150-200 (crabs), while this year we’ve caught 25 quintals (a unit of weight equal to 100 kg), but only since the second week of July, so it’s a rather unusual scenario. From an environmental point of view, blue crabs are a real problem because they attack the juvenile fish, the eels, and they interrupt the food cycle of the fish because they eat clams, mussels, and oysters. Unfortunately, they are growing exponentially because they seem to have found their ideal habitat in the Orbetello lagoon."
9. Crabs being moved from a large bucket to a tank where there are other crabs caught previously
10. Close of the blue crabs being piled up
11. Blue crabs being put into crates to be sold later
12. Close of blue crabs
13. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Sergio Amenta, fisherman and marketing manager of 'La Peschereccia', a fishermen's cooperative in Orbetello:
“We are very worried, very worried, because we are going into the eel season, and these animals will eat all of our ‘lavorieri’ (type of fishing net), all of our gear, all of our ‘inganni’ (type of fishing net). They will eat them directly, because the king blue crab is a swimmer crab, so it is not a crab that just walks on the bottom, but swims, so anything it finds in mid-water it will attack.”
14. Underwater shot of blue crabs inside a fishing net
15. Fishing net being pulled out of the water
16. Water surface
17. Underwater shot of a blue crab inside a fishing net
18. SOUNDBITE (Italian), Enrica Franchi, marine biologist at the University of Siena:
"The Callinectes Sapidus is an alien species, so it is not typical of our seas, it certainly emits more than half a million eggs (per year) and is a very aggressive species. In our seas it has no competitors other than man and therefore causes major damage to the indigenous species, in particular polychaetes, amphipods and small fish, and reproduces, creating an imbalance in the indigenous fauna.”
19. Blue crab being dropped from a fishing net into a bucket with eels in it
20. Pan right of a large bucket with freshly caught blue crabs being emptied into a tank with other blue crabs inside
21. Pan of crates filled with blue crabs
22. Tilt up of blue crabs being crammed into a crate
23. Close of eggs (orange) attached to the body of a blue crab
25. Close of crab being cut for cooking

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