According to NPR, this species has been detrimental to local ecosystems for some two centuries and there are so many of these little crabs that using them for whiskey-flavoring might not be enough.
Will Robinson is the product developer at Tamworth Distilling who came with the idea to make crab flavored whiskey out of green crabs and he says that the tiny marine animals are cleaned and prepared just like at the restaurant.
He said that "people are going to hear crab whiskey, and I'd venture to say three-quarters of them are going to go, 'No, absolutely not,'. But if you can get them to taste it, they totally change their tune for the most part."
After they clean the crabs, the team at the company prepare them via vacuum still, which allows it to control the temperature, making it better than plain boiling them.
"It looks like a crazy piece of laboratory equipment. It preserves the flavor and aroma molecules that would get destroyed if we were to boil it", Robinson said.
Although about one pound of green crabs is used for each bottle of whiskey, Dr. Gabriela Bradt, marine biologist at the University of New Hampshire, says that the sheer numbers of green crabs make it so that this effort isn't going to be enough to solve the problem.
According to her, "they are probably one of the most successful invasive species that we have in North America, at least in the marine world. They can eat about 40 mussels per day, just one crab. And so you multiply that by a bazillion, and you have no more clams."
Climate change isn't helping, either, as the invasive species is able to survive better due to the oceans getting warmer.
Still, Dr. Bradt thinks that projects similar to Crab Trapper might be able to help with solving the issue in the way that they can raise awareness.
Researchers are now trying to track these crabs to see where they molt, since that's when they get vulnerable and if they are able to catch them right after the process, they could easily cook them and get more people to eat them.
Any thoughts?