Grass. It is the hallmark of the “perfect home”, and the bane of many a homeowner. Personally, I hate mowing lawns. I’ve been doing it since I was old enough to push a lawn mower in my father’s yard, which, at half an acre, was pretty big for a suburban family. I’ve always been allergic to grass clippings which makes mowing it an exercise in immuno-masochism. Owning a lawn mower is a curse of home ownership, so I’ve advised my offspring never to acquire one. They only lead to misery.

My current home sits on ¾ of an acre and came with a used riding mower. Despite my aversion to mowing, it’s still much cheaper than paying for the service, which would cost as much as the mower every year. I hired a mowing service one year that my mower wasn’t working, which prompted me to spend the money to rebuild it. Then I sold it and bought a new zero-turn radius mower, which I love, but still.

Lawns, generally and collectively, are a blight on the landscape

Suburban lawns are the biggest irrigated crop in the United States, covering over 40 million acres, or 2% of our arable land. They are a non-functional monoculture of unproductive plants that displace a much wider diversity of natural vegetation and wildlife. Manicured lawns are wildlife dead zones. Maintaining them requires periodic addition of weed-killing poisons that run off into our waterways and pollute our groundwater, and since all the houses in my subdivision use well water, we are just poisoning ourselves.

I have never used weed killers or fertilizer on my lawn and have just let it do whatever it wants, which means I probably have more weeds than grass now. My lawn stands (sits?) in marked contrast to my neighbor’s across the street, which is manually manicured and chemically cultivated to 99.9% purebred monoculture with nary a weed in sight. It’s my honor to be the seed bank for all the dandelions in the neighborhood, though my neighbors might not agree.

The major problem with turf grass lawns is that they do not provide any nutritious nectar or seeds to pollinators. Pollinators, including bees, butterflies, and moths are critically important for pollinating most of our fruit crops. But many are in decline. The United States is home to 3600 species of bees, but 29% of them are now declining or vulnerable, and some may already be extinct. Honeybees are not included in this list, as they are imported from Europe. We also host over 540 species of butterflies, but they have decreased by 22% since 2000.

Last year I decided it was time to reduce the amount of grass that I mow by converting part of my lawn into a pollinator sanctuary. I am, in essence, rewilding it. For background research, I visited a native plant arboretum in Delaware and came away with a long list of unmemorable plant names that I have since forgotten, and the impression that it could be a lot of work. Nonetheless, he persisted. After much more reading, I was finally prepared to begin my rewilding journey. Here is the path I traveled:

Step One: Make a Plan, Stan

Making a plan seemed like it would require a lot of work, and I initially thought I would just wing it. But failing to plan is planning to fail, or some such nonsense. Before starting my rewilding process, I imported a satellite photo of my yard into a presentation program (which I’ll just call PP) and added some shapes to indicate trees, both existing and future-fantasy-dream trees.

About ten years ago I planted two arbor-day-give-away oak tree saplings in my front yard, which was entirely grass. At present they are both about 15 feet tall and are beginning to offer some shade to the yard, nutrition for caterpillars, support for one or two bird nests, as well as an the appearance of political leanings. My plan was to use those trees as the corners of a large pollinator garden that would eventually take up most of the front yard. Using PP, I laid out the size of my ‘garden’, which would be about 50 x 30, or 1500 square feet, about the same footprint as my house.

Before purchasing plants, I made a list of those that seemed like good choices. I depended for some of this on my friend Deb C, who is planning a similar garden, and who happens to be a trained horticulturist and certified Maryland Naturalist. She suggested we use matrix planting, in which we fill in the spaces between perennial flowers with native grasses that will crowd out the weeds, wiregrass, and crabgrass. Together we selected about half a dozen species of native perennials that would be good for our pollinator gardens.

Some online research gave me approximate heights and widths of the mature plants. Using this, I made a plan with PP showing where I would place the plants. My plan was to plant them in alternating patches of 3-4 plants, so I would have a variety of colors like a chess board. A complete list of the plants I installed, along with their size, color, bloom period, and types of wildlife attracted is available HERE, along with a nifty chart of their blooming dates and colors.

In some locations, you may need permission to change your lawn, especially if you are part of a restrictive Home Owners Association (HOA). Fortunately, my HOA does not have any rules that would prevent establishing pollinator gardens, though it does require lawns to be maintained, and I once found a nastygram in my mailbox when I left it untended for two months while traveling. But if there is no lawn, I can’t mow it, can I? And my home state of Maryland has enacted legislation that prohibits placing restrictions on “low-impact landscaping”, which includes pollinator gardens, rain gardens, and other features that support wildlife. Plus, I’m on the HOA board (no hate mail, please), and I’ve already explained to the other members what I’m doing. So, being on the HOA board has its advantages.

Step Two: Remove the Lawn, Dawn

Before you plant, you need to remove the existing grass. You could dig it up, or plow it under, but both of those options are laborious. And poisoning it with weed killer would defeat the whole purpose of the garden. A better method is to solarize it by covering it with clear plastic and allowing the sun to bake it. I decided to start small and see how it works before expanding to the full area I had mapped out. So, in March of 2025, I laid a 20 x 30-foot tarp over half of my intended garden zone, staking the corners and edges, and laying some bricks on it to keep it from blowing away. For the rest of the year, I mowed carefully around it. That area (Zone 1) is about half of what I originally planned to convert.

Step Three: Prepare the Zone, Joan

In March 2026, as soon as the last of the snow melted, I removed the tarp, bricks, and stakes. The grass underneath was mostly yellow and dead. I then towed my heavy garden trailer to a nursery, filled it with two yards (= tons) of mulch, and spread that over half of the 20 x 30 garden zone. At this point I decided to rototill an extra strip of living lawn in order to sow some random wildflowers, for which I borrowed a rototiller from my friend Deb (which didn’t turn out well, as I just supercharged all the crabgrass. Should have covered and killed it first). Although I did not till the area I had already mulched, I decided to till the remaining half of the zone that I had not yet mulched; this is an experiment to see if tilling makes any difference to the final outcome. Having done that, I went back to the nursery for two more yards of mulch and spread it out.

After mulching I surrounded the plot with border timbers (rough cut 4 x 4s) that were staked into the ground. This phased turned out to be a lot of work and is making me think twice about the size of the final project.

Step Four: Get Your Plants, Vance

There are many sources for native plants. First, you need to find out what growing zone you live in. Then go online and learn what is recommended for your zone. You can buy from local nurseries, but I have found they mostly offer whatever they have and aren’t focused on native species. If you are lucky, there may be nurseries that specialize in native plants in your area. There are many online sources for plants, but you may need to buy in bulk. Some will even sell you a kit, with a paper map to lay on the ground showing the location for each plant. We ordered our plants from Ecoplantia but there are many other sources. A third source may be local non-profits or University extension services that sell native plants in the spring; these events are usually seasonal, so start looking for them in late winter.

Deb and I ordered flats containing 50 plugs of Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), a tall perennial with white flowers, and 70 plugs of Muhlenbergia, a tall, showy, reddish grass that will be our matrix filler. Our plants came as plugs that were about 4 inches deep and 1.5 inches diameter. Buying in large numbers kept the price down to about $3.50 per plug.

Another friend and master gardener, John M, alerted me to a plant sale and seminar on pollinator gardens offered by The Nanticoke Watershed Alliance (NWA). I immediately signed up, and in mid-May we attended the seminar and picked up our plants, which included 3 to 6 plugs each of multiple perennials (see list), for a total of about 30 plants. Included in that purchase were Coreopsis, otherwise known as Tickseed (which sounds like a haven for parasites), two types of Goldenrod (Solidago spp), Ragwort, Asters, Coneflowers, and sunflowers (see full list below). (Just looking at pictures of these makes me want to sneeze, but I’m told that they are not the sources of allergenic pollen, and I’m confusing them with ragweed, to which I know I’m allergic, but we’ll see.) Some of these items were not on my initial list, but they came as a package, and the price was good, about $3.00 each. I also purchased two dogwood saplings and three bayberry bushes for planting elsewhere.

Another source of native plants was an offering from the Lower Shore Land Trust (LSLT). From them, I purchased six quart-size pots each of two more varieties of Coreopsis and six pots of Rudbeckia maxima (i.e. AKA giant black-eyed Susans to us peonies). [Note: These are AWESOME plants and are already 3 feet tall with saucer sized flowers, that remind me of Audrey Two from Little Shop of Horrors. Check them out!]. These plants were rather expensive at $9.50 each, but they are large, and the money is going to a good cause, so WTF.

Step 5: Time to Install, Y’all

The first batch I planted was the mixed group of plants from the NWA. After removing the plugs from their containers, I laid them out on the mulched zone where I planned to plant them, according to my plan, in batches of three or four, at distances of one to two feet apart. For the first ten or so, I cleared a small area of mulch, then dug a hole with a hand shovel to plant them. But the soil, which is mostly sand, was hard-packed, and didn’t allow much room to grow. After that, I used a post-hole digger to dig a hole six inches wide and about eight inches deep, then replaced half the soil so there would be a soft bottom beneath the plugs. I placed the plugs or larger plants in the hole and filled in the dirt around them. Getting those plants in the ground required about four hours of labor.

The hard part of this using a long-handled shovel to scrape away enough of the mulch, which ranged from two to six inches deep, to get at the ground underneath. I needed to expose at least a square foot of ground to accommodate the hole, and a spot to dump the soil so it wouldn’t get mixed together with the mulch. After planting and backfilling, I covered the exposed soil as much as possible, leaving a crater in the mulch around the plant.

The following weekend I collected my large plants from the LSLT. I planted them using the same method - digging a deep hole and backfilling the bottom - again in groups of three spaced about one foot apart. By now, my initial plan had been filled out, partially with plants I didn’t plan on having, so for the final planting, I placed 25 plugs of Penstemon randomly around my Zone wherever there seemed to be gaps. These will be large plants, so I planted them individually rather than in groups. The plugs were small, though, and I realized it was simpler to dig out and refill the entire eight-inch-deep hole, then use a hand shovel to dig a four-inch hole in the loosened soil in which to place the plug. This second planting required another four hours.

Finally, in week three, I planted the Muhlenbergia grass. This is a matrix filler and the idea is to spread it around the open spaces between the other plants. For this operation, I got wise and bought a bulb augur – a corkscrew device that attaches to my portable drill. Using that, I just drilled a hole through the mulch into the soil, dropped in the plug, and tamped it with my foot. MUCH easier than digging. That task required another two hours of labor.

What’s The Tally, Sally?

At this point, I have committed about 24 hours of labor to the project, not counting my time doing online and book research. I have invested $870, about half of which was for plants, and the rest for tarps, mulch, border timbers, etc. I’m not including the cost of gas for driving back and forth to get plants and supplies which, due to Trump’s failed Iran War, probably added another $130 to the cost, so I’m going to round it all up to a nice even $1000.

What’s the Buzz, Cuz?

At some point in the future, I plan to install a Bee Hotel, but haven’t decided exactly how to build it yet, so that may take some time. My ultimate goal was to create two similarly sized gardens separated by a walkway, but I’m not yet sure I want to invest the same amount of time and effort into the project next year. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I check on my plants daily to see that they are watered (I have sprinklers) and still alive. Some have already been nibbled on by the wild rabbits that I have allowed to continue living under my shed for several generations because I’m such a softy (see Bunny Gardens). It would be more work and expense to fence them out, so I don’t want to do it unless I must.

I can’t wait to see the garden in full bloom. I am keeping a weekly log of flowering times, which I will share with you in a later report. Some of the plants will flower in summer, and some not until fall, but in any season it should be a riot of color, and hopefully, a place full of bees, butterflies, and birds. Let the infestation begin.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Last weekend, I went on a tour of pollinator gardens with my wife and friends Deb and Suzie. I wanted to see how my feeble efforts compared to other people’s. In one yard, Rudbeckia was allowed to go wild, and it was pretty jungle-y. A few other yards had patches of pollinators spread around different parts of their yards. My friend Tom Horton, an extraordinary writer on subjects natural and unnatural, has collected many varieties of trees in his yard, which is now a dense urban forest. We only saw one other dedicated pollinator zone, attached to an elegant waterfront home. The owners had spared no expense – they had planted their garden on the same dates that I did, but they had purchased large, already-blooming plants, so their garden was already in full blossom. The final garden was in a recent housing development where our friend Maggi had campaigned to leave one house plot undeveloped, and had turned it into a community pollinator garden by carrying water in a bucket from her home.

I came away from that tour feeling like my meager efforts were on target. My garden was more organized than most I’d seen, was built in a more deliberate manner, and included a greater variety of plants. But they are still single individuals spread over a large area. It will take several years for them to spread out and reach their full potential. On arriving home from our tour, Deb and Suzie spotted some crabgrass in my wildflower patch and could not stop themselves from pulling it out by hand. Shamed by their example, I spent this morning pulling out the rest of it. I did not know weeding was going to be so much work, and if I want to maintain this garden, I will have to do it frequently.

I think I prefer mowing the lawn.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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Resources

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-07-10/going-beyond-grass-turning-lawns-into-a-pollinators-paradise/

https://beecityusa.org/#

https://pollinator.org/

www.izelplants.com/

This is the list of perennials I planted in my pollinator garden and their expected flowering schedule. Colors are approximate, and dots indicate a dark-centered flower.

Here is the budget for my project:

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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We arrived in Nemuro in the middle of winter, during the mid-winter school holiday. In Japan, spring is the beginning of the school year, which starts in mid-March. Our daughter Cailey was six years old and had just started Kindergarten at Northstar Elementary in Kodiak the previous fall, so we enrolled her in the local elementary school for first grade. Oddly enough, the school in Nemuro was also called NorthStar. Cailey would be the first and only American student to ever attend there.

School Day Surprise

Before school began, we met with the principal and a teacher at the school, who had only two questions for us. Will she eat Japanese food? they asked. Of course, we told them, she loved Japanese food, especially any kind of noodles. And, they asked, can she use a Japanese toilet, which in this case was a pit over which you squatted to do your business. Flush toilets were not available for the children to use. We hadn’t had much experience with them but assured them she could handle it. That was really all they wanted to know.

A week before school started, our neighbor and friend Mrs. Ishigaki asked Meri to go on a pre-school shopping trip to the town of Kushiro, about an hour and a half drive to the west, with her and her daughter Mari, who would be attending school with Cailey.

Oh Boy! A shopping trip! Meri and Cailey were excited to get out of the house and have an adventure. The Japanese word for such adventure is (drum roll, please) Shopping-Go! How appropriate. Off they went for a day to purchase books, school and art supplies from a list given to them by the school. I suppose they had great fun, because I wasn’t there to witness it, but just having a day out with local people was a great opportunity to explore and learn more about the culture.

Regulation supplies for the students included a heavy, boxy, leather backpack; red for girls, and black for boys. They were ridiculously expensive, so we were happy to accept one from a friend whose children had outgrown it. And each student was required to have a solid-color ball cap; Cailey’s light green cap would easily identify her on the playground as belonging to a specific class of first graders.

Another friend of ours, Mikiko Honda, had suggested that Meri dress in Kimono to attend the opening day ceremony at the school. When we westerners imagine kimono we think about the ornate clothing worn by Geishas or what we may have seen in old movies. Kimono is really just a word for clothing, or something you put on. The word is derived from ki (to put on) and mono (a thing), so it is literally “a thing to put on”. Likewise, the word for a drink is nomimono (drink-thing), derived from nomu (to drink) and mono (thing), and tabemono (food, or eat-thing) is derived from taberu (to eat) and mono.

But Japanese people dress like everyone else now, so traditional kimono (for both men and women) is a more formal type of clothing reserved for special occasions, like weddings or cultural events. Nonetheless, Meri and her friends thought it would be great idea for her to wear one. Kimono is a multi-layered garment, so putting it on requires help. Early that morning, Mikiko and her mother arrived, and helped Meri to dress. The first layer is an undergarment like a full-length slip. Over that goes the ornately decorated outer kimono. Then a sash is wrapped around the body and tied in the back. There are also special socks, and shoes, a type of sandal with small wooden blocks for the sole.

The whole apparatus is quite snug, so after being all wrapped up, it is difficult to walk. The “geisha shuffle” is really the result of not being able to move your legs very far. Being American, Meri is used to walking with large strides, so had to be coached by her handlers; “Small steps”, they said.

Cailey’s choice of clothing for this momentous occasion was a bright dress with yellow sunflowers on it, topped off with a green ball cap identifying her as a first grader. As for me, I had bought two double-breasted suits before going to Japan, one black and one grey, and I chose to wear the black jacket over gray pants, along with my signature black beret.

When we arrived at the school that morning, the three of us were quite the sight. Most parents were wearing standard business clothing or suits, nice but nothing special. When they saw Meri in her Kimono, you could hear a collective gasp. “American in Kimono!” they were (probably) saying. It was strange enough for an American student to attend the school, but for her mother to show up in traditional Japanese garb was a great surprise. It was also a great icebreaker and showed our respect for the Japanese culture, and how open we were to the experience. People who would have been otherwise very shy to approach us were lining up to greet us and express their admiration for Meri’s clothing choice. Or at least that’s what we thought was happening.

Most of the other children were dressed in miniature suits – the boys in jackets and ties, and the girls in blazers and skirts. They were quite drab, compared to Cailey, who stood out like, well, a sunflower in a lawn of dried grass. And that was to be typical of her experience. Whenever the other kids were doing something, Cailey was often doing her own thing, in her own way, just being herself. But more on that later. All in all, opening day of school was a great success, thanks to our thoughtful friends and neighbors.

School Was NOT Just for Kids

Meri, being a teacher, had brought with us a year’s worth of study materials in math, English, and social studies, so that Cailey would not fall behind in her American schoolwork. But Cailey wasn’t the only one attending school. For the first few months, Meri went to school with Cailey to understand what was being taught, and what was expected of the students.

Unlike American schoolrooms which include the teacher’s desk, the Japanese teachers’ desks were all concentrated in one room, where they started their day. Each day, the students came into an empty classroom, where they had the run of the room without supervision for 15-20 minutes before the teacher arrived. This would have been a non-starter in the US and a major insurance liability, especially because each classroom had a wood-burning Franklin stove in the center that was often quite hot. How the kids never burned themselves on it is still a miracle.

After school, many of the children went to Kumon School, which was an extended learning program, in a somewhat less rigorous environment. Meri and Cailey both attended one, where they learned how to read some of the Japanese alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana, but not Kanji). This was helpful because the first grade teachers sent home notes about what was taught in school, and what the students were expected to do at home or bring to school the next day. At first, these worksheets were just gibberish, but after attending Kumon school for a while Meri was able to interpret them and understand what was being asked. Going to school was really a family affair.

Everything’s Out in the Open at the Onsen

In late March we were invited by our friends the Hondas to travel with them and several other families to an Onsen for the weekend. Onsens are hot springs and are common around Japan. Visiting them is another great Japanese tradition that has a whole unwritten rule book about behavior and etiquette. Onsens come in different sizes, varieties of development, and types of experience. Many of them have been incorporated into hotels, covered up with a building, and include spas, massage salons, etc., and these can be very expensive. But some, especially in Hokkaido, are still only partially developed outdoor pools, with maybe a small hut for changing clothes, and some without even that.

Yuyado Daiichi was a small Ryokan (traditional hotel) in Nakashibetsu-cho, adjacent to the Yoroushi Onsen. Its setting is a lovely area on the bank of the Shibetsu River, near the mountains of the Shiretoko Peninsula. Our visit would include one night’s lodging and full meals at a price of ¥30,000 yen (about $300). We were living on a very tight budget, so this was a lot of money for us at the time, but we felt that it was a rare opportunity to experience Japanese culture in the company of people who could guide us through it. So, of course, we said YES!

We arrived at the hotel on Saturday afternoon and were shown to our room, which was covered with tatami mats and included futons. Whereas western hotels charge by the room, Japanese hotels and ryokans often charged by the person, or rather, per futon. We had learned to sleep on two futons with Cailey wedged between us, so could rent a room for the price of two futons, saving a bit of money.

The Onsen experience is a whole-body cleansing. After donning our hotel-provided yukatas (essentially bathrobes), we entered the bathing areas, which were separate for men and women. This was a large room with individual bathing stalls along one wall, each with a shower head, a small wooden stool, and a bucket. To wash, you sit on the stool and use a washcloth or brush to scrub your body literally until the outer layer of skin is removed, then rinse yourself off using the shower spigot. Some people do this so vigorously their skin becomes bright red, looking like a freshly cooked lobster. This process is supposed to be enjoyable, and you can easily spend an hour or more probing every nook and cranny of your body for some hidden flecks of dirt or flaking skin cells and terminating their existence with prejudice. Afterwards, cleansed of all physical pollutants, you move outdoors to the large pool.

In some onsens, this is just a large communal bathtub. At this onsen, there were three outdoor pools next to a small clear river running over stones. You can wear the bathrobe, but most people just use a small rectangular “modesty” towel to cover their private parts as they enter the pool. Here, there were separate men’s and women’s pools, so privacy wasn’t an issue. The water was HOT, probably over 40° C (104° F) and very relaxing. After soaking in our gender-specific pools for a while, we moved into the communal pool, where men and women bathed together. Each of us was draped with our modesty towels, and the sulfurous smelling water was rather cloudy anyway, so no private parts were obvious, and we all made conscious efforts to avoid staring at anything below the water.

Relaxing in a hot onsen with a bunch of naked friends and/or strangers is a great way to socialize. When we remove our clothing and all the external drapery that we adopt to define ourselves, what’s left exposed is our real self. Conversations become more intimate. The hot water relaxes not only your muscles but your inhibitions as well, allowing you to unburden yourself of worry and woe. When you finally emerge from the soak you feel lighter in both mind and body.

After our soak, we all went back to our rooms to freshen up before dinner. Dinner was served in a private dining room on low tables, where we all sat on the floor, mostly still wearing our yukatas. Dinner included king crabs (of course) along with fish, rice, seaweed, salty pickles, and of course, lots of beer and sake. Most of the conversation was in Japanese, and sometimes our friends would translate for us, but even though we didn’t understand most of it, the hot soak, warm sake, and friendly environment ensured that we were relaxed and had a great time. We were happy to have been included in a Japanese tradition as if we were family members. Learning the onsen ritual from locals made it easier to enjoy the experience, which we probably would never have done by ourselves. And for the rest of our stay in Japan, we spent weekends hunting down obscure and remote onsens to enjoy, naked in the woods. Or the beach. Which is another story altogether.

Singing a Silent Opera

In the Spring, the community of Nemuro put on a local talent show in the large municipal auditorium. Some of Meri’s orchestral partners planned to present a scene from the opera Die Fledermaus, including O-Nishi San (“Mr. Big West”) and his wife who was an operatic singer. For the scene, she would sing the famous aria (involving a slew of sopranic “ah-ah-ah-ahs”), while half a dozen other people danced a waltz and sang some of the chorus. Meri though it would be a great way for me to get to know people, so volunteered my services for this little shenanigan. Without asking me.

Now, it would be an understatement to say that I was not thrilled with this arrangement. My objection was not about the dancing – Meri has seen to it that I am not deficient in that department – but my singing voice is closer to that of a frog than a robin, and there’s not a thing she could do about that. But I went along with it anyway, and attended a rehearsal, at which I was given some lyrics to memorize.

Most operas are sung in the language in which they were written, usually Italian, sometimes German, rarely French or English. But this opera would be sung in Japanese. To learn my part, I wrote out the words phonetically on index cards and taped them to the sunshades in our rented car. Each day as I drove to work, I listened to a tape of the opera and sang along in phonetic Japanese. After a week or two of this, I was ready. By that I mean, I knew the words, although I was not really looking forward to standing on a stage and singing them in front of several hundred people.

A week before the performance, I came down with a sore throat. Which soon became a cough. A few days before the performance I had a fever and went to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with bronchitis, and given a bunch of drugs. I also had some over-the-counter American meds (Nyquil) that we had brought with us. A few tablets of that, and I was flying loops around the moon. Slowly, I started to feel better.

After taking some days off, I went back to work, after taking a double dose of the OTC cough meds, and then stopping at a convenience store for a couple of cans of hot vending machine coffee, which I downed quickly. By the time I got to work, I was looking at the ground from kite level. In the lab, I examined the little crabs that I was tending in an experimental aquarium, to see whether they preferred being on sand or gravel. In each of four aquaria, I counted the crabs that were on each substrate and recorded them. At least that’s what I was supposed to do.

The next day I felt good enough to skip the cough meds. When I got to the lab, I discovered that, on the previous day, I had removed all of the crabs from all four aquaria and then replaced them all into one aquarium. The experiment was ruined. I had been so high on caffeine and cough meds that I had no idea what I was doing and didn’t even remember being there.

The day before the opera performance, I developed laryngitis and lost my voice. If I had sounded like a frog when I had a voice, I now sounded like a big frog with a smaller frog in its throat. Other than that, I felt fine. Siezing my opportunity, I told Meri to tell her friends I was extremely sorry and terribly disappointed that I couldn’t participate in the opera and I wished them well. But they said to come anyway and just lip-synch. They still needed me for the dance, or someone would not have a partner. Reluctantly, I agreed.

On the day of the performance, I showed up, dressed in my black double-breasted suit. Several acts preceded us, but I have no memory of them. At the appointed time, the group walked out on stage. The music started. The soprano sang. I found my partner and waltzed around the stage. Then we lined up and started to sing. Or they did. I just mouthed the words, pretending as if I was singing along with them in my loudest voice. Without making a sound. And nobody noticed. We finished the scene, bowed to the applause, and shuffled offstage. I had just completed my opera debut in complete silence. It was a spectacular success.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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Newspaper Shrimp

When I was a kid, my family spent two weeks every summer on North Carolina’s outer banks. One of the highlights of the trip was when my mom would boil up several pounds of freshly caught shrimp (which she pronounced “sree-imp” in her Georgia accent) and spread it out over newspaper on a picnic table for us to eat. I loved picking off the legs, peeling off the shell, and dipping the tasty tails in spicy cocktail sauce. “Newspaper shrimp” my sister and I called it.

We Love Shrimp! It is America’s favorite seafood. We love shrimp so much that we import more of it than any other seafood we eat. In 2022, the United States only caught 106,000 metric tons (t) of shrimp, but we imported 873,000 t of the stuff, equal to 88% of our total consumption. Anytime you buy shrimp in a restaurant or store, there is a 90% probability that it was imported from another country. Actually, it’s higher than that, because wild-caught shrimp are mostly available in the summer, and in the Southeast, so depending on the season and where you live, your likelihood of finding wild American shrimp is infinitesimally small.

So where does all this shrimp come from? When we think of shrimp, the image that comes to mind is a white boat rolling on a blue sea, hauling up nets bulging with wiggling pink crustaceans, and dumping them on deck to be sorted by sunburnt fishermen. This image is seared into our minds by movies such as Forest Gump and The Prince of Tides. But the reality? Most shrimp are farmed in ponds dug out of mangrove swamps in Southeast Asia or South America, and harvested by sunburnt, overworked, underpaid laborers, and some of that shrimp is processed by refugees working under slave-like conditions in Thailand or China (more on that later).

Fact is, most shrimp on the market is produced by aquaculture. This is actually one of the financial and biological success stories in Aquaculture, although the ecological and social costs make it a questionable success. In the US, only 12% of marketed shrimp are US wild-caught; 78% come from Asia, and another 22% from South America. Around the world, the top producers of shrimp are India, Indonesia, Ecuador, Vietnam, and Thailand.

One Genus to Rule them All

Most of the shrimp we eat belong to the genus Penaeus (or did so before they were re-named). Penaeid shrimp are warm-water coastal species, living in the nearshore zones of most countries between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In the US, three species are dominant. Along the southeast coast of the Carolinas and Georgia, White Shrimp Litopenaeus setiferus are most abundant. Farther south into Florida, Pink Shrimp Penaeus duorarum become abundant, and Brown Shrimp Penaeus aztecus are more common in the Gulf of Mexico.

Imported (cultivated) shrimp are dominated by Tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon, the most widely cultured shrimp in world. Whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei are becoming more abundant though, because development of disease-resistant strains has made them more profitable. Other shrimp in the grocery store include Kuruma shrimp Marsupenaeus japonicus. Argentine Red shrimp Pleoticus muelleri are one of the few wild-caught shrimp available.

Northern or Pink Shrimp, including Pandalus borealis and P. jordani, are a totally different kind of shrimp, often sold as “popcorn shrimp” or more recently, cooked in a spicy Asian sauce as “bang-bang” shrimp. These are small shrimp that live in cold waters, forming huge schools in the boreal waters off the Northwest Coast of the US, including Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, and along both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of maritime Canada. Other Pandalid shrimps are common in boreal waters, including Pandalus platyceros, known as “spot shrimp” in the Pacific Northwest, and mostly caught with pots or traps as a subsistence fishery.

Northern shrimp were once a major component of the boreal marine ecosystems in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans but have declined dramatically as ocean temperatures have warmed. In the 1970’s shrimp fishing was a major activity in Coastal Alaska, but most of the shrimp disappeared in the 1980’s, and their biomass was replaced by pollock (which, ironically, is used to make fake shrimp).

All of the Penaeid shrimp are large and sold either cooked or uncooked. Prices range from $8 per pound for small shrimp (50-60 count, i.e. shrimp per pound) to $25 for larger shrimp (15-20 count), whereas Northern shrimp are small (80-100 count) and sell for about $15-20 per pound.

Down on the (Shrimp) Farm

Around the world, fifteen species of shrimp are produced by aquaculture. Much of the technology for this was developed in the United States at places like Louisiana State University. But growing shrimp requires lots of land and water, or saltwater ponds on the coast. In the US, land prices are expensive, and coastal mangroves are protected from destruction, so most of the production is now done in other countries. The species cultivated include Tiger shrimp, Penaeus monodon, Whiteleg shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, Kuruma shrimp Marsupenaeus japonicus, and Chinese Whiteleg shrimp Fenneropenaeus chinensis.

Most shrimp culture starts with wild broodstock – adults captured from wild populations. But some cultivation is now conducted with captive, fast growing, and disease-resistant strains. One of these is Litopenaeus stylirostris – the so-called “super-shrimp”. Pairs of adult shrimp are placed in solitary cages for spawning. Sperm may be extracted from male shrimp and used to artificially inseminate females (which I unsuccessfully attempted to imitate with crayfish). Females release fertilized eggs into the water, which are captured and cultivated in one of two ways.

Extensive Cultivation occurs in ponds that may be up to 1 hectare (ha) in size and 2 m deep. In many countries, such as Vietnam, these are carved out of coastal mangrove forests. This has detrimental ecological consequences because mangroves protect coastlines from storms and erosion and are nurseries for juvenile fish, shrimp, and crabs, as well as habitat for birds and reptiles. And they absorb large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So, destroying mangroves degrades coastal habitats. Many countries such as Ecuador and Indonesia now recognize these problems and are trying to move shrimp farms back from the coast and rebuild or replant their mangrove forests.

Ponds built on land may be lined with plastic or concrete and aerated with paddlewheels. Some of these are also used for polyculture with Tilapia and southeast Asian mud crabs (Scylla serrata). Shrimp in the ponds are fed pelleted diets plus trash fish (bycatch from wild shrimp fisheries) or mussels. Cultivation of Penaeus monodon can produce 5-10 tons of shrimp per ha. In contrast, Tilapia cultivation routinely produces 200 tons/ha.

Intensive cultivation occurs in indoor tanks, usually far inland from coastal areas. Places where this occurs include Saudi Arabia, and US states including Hawaii, Missouri, and Maryland. Some tank systems use recirculating water with Biofloc, a mixture of algae, bacteria, and some carbohydrate source like molasses or rice bran. These “Zero-exchange” systems use very little water, because all the wastewater is captured and reused. This reduces waste discharge and opportunities for disease introduction.

The Giant Shrimp that Ate My Lunch

One type of cultivated shrimp is the giant Malaysian freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii. It has blue claws at the end of appendages that are longer than its body. As a graduate student in Fisheries Science at the University of Washington, I studied aquaculture with Dr. Ling Shao-wen, who developed the cultivation techniques for Macrobrachium. When he began his work, he thought the shrimp spent their whole lives in freshwater streams. In his laboratory, he put pairs of shrimp in aquaria, but after they mated and released eggs, the larvae would die before they developed. Every day he added something different to the water to see if it would help the larvae survive. Nothing worked. Then he started adding bits of his lunch. He tried rice, fish, and seaweed but still nothing worked. One day he put soy sauce into the water and a few larvae survived. The next day he added more, and more larvae survived. He realized then that the larvae needed salt in their water. This led him to the discovery that the shrimp eggs and larvae drifted downstream towards the ocean, and the larvae needed brackish water to survive.

My fellow graduate students thought that farming Macrobrachium was the future, and many of us wanted to start our own shrimp farms. It’s a good thing, maybe, that we didn’t. The saying at that time was “Do you want to know how to make a million dollars in aquaculture? Start with two million”. Macrobrachium did not turn out to be our ticket to riches, but it is now a major aquaculture species in Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Adults are spawned in a laboratory, and larvae are released into growout ponds where they are fed pelleted diets. The adults are harvested by seine net. Over 200,000 tons/yr are harvested, which is a respectable amount, but just a fraction of the Penaeid shrimp produced. You can occasionally find these for sale in places like Costco or Sam’s club.

Small Shrimp Have Big Problems

Cultivation of shrimp has many challenges. Despite their wide availability and reasonable price, shrimp are still seen as a luxury product by many consumers. Increased production created oversupply, causing prices to decrease. Demand declined during the Covid years and subsequent inflation. Feeds require fish protein and oil, made from forage fish, which are getting scarcer following the collapse of Peruvian Anchovetta, increasing the cost of feed.

Disease is still a major problem, and much of the cultivation relies on one species, Peneaus monodon, which has a poor immune system and is susceptible to diseases such as white spot syndrome and acute hepatopancreatic necrosis.

Shrimp cultivation produces large amounts of waste due to feces and uneaten food, and this is often discharged into coastal waters. Fertilizers, chemicals, and feeds contribute nutrients that lead to eutrophication. Conversion of mangrove forests has resulted in major losses of mangroves. Half of the world mangroves have been lost since 1940, and 30-50% of this is due to shrimp farms.

Shrimp and Human Rights

Another major problem in the shrimp industry is human rights abuse and the use of slave labor. In southeast Asia, workers who are hired to work on shrimp fishing boats may be held at sea for months without being paid. According to a 2015 article in the Guardian, over 500,000 refugees from Myanmar have migrated into Thailand, where they constitute 90% of the seafood workforce. Almost 60% of them are working under forced labor conditions, and 30% have been trafficked or sold into this system. Many are captive in Thai shrimp peeling plants. Many workers are in forced detention in unlicensed factories, living in squalid conditions where their wages have been withheld. The shrimp they produce are mixed with other sources and sold worldwide, so it is difficult to determine the exact source.

Another 2024 article in the New Yorker described how North Korean workers were sent to China where they were forced to work in Chinese seafood processing plants in slave-like conditions, and all their wages were sent back to the government of North Korea.

The moral of this story is DON’T BUY SHRIMP FROM THAILAND OR CHINA.

Synopsis: Should You Eat Shrimp?

Freshly caught shrimp are one of the most nutritious seafood meals you can buy. They have medium levels of protein, and are extremely low in calories, fat, and sodium. Shrimp do not have much omega-3 fatty acids but do have moderate levels of cholesterol. If you are anywhere near the coastal regions of the US where shrimp are caught, you should eat them. Frozen shrimp can also a good dietary choice.

And how many ways can you eat shrimp? (See Gump, Forrest, The Movie). Shrimp can be steamed, boiled, fried, fricasseed, taco-ed, etouffee-ed, pasta-ed, jambalaya-ed, Caesar salad-ed, cocktailed, stir-fried, chowdered, stuffed, quesadilla-ed, ceviche-ed, and probably the best way of all, served with grits, fried green tomatoes and red-eye sauce. Just to mention a few.

But eating shrimp can have consequences. When done carelessly, shrimp cultivation can damage the coastal environment, and human rights abuses are rampant in the industry. To some degree, this is the result of trying to turn what used to be a luxury food into a commodity. So, be selective when buying shrimp – examine the package, and make sure you know what species it contains, and where they are from.

According to Seafood Watch, the Best Choice are indoor-farmed shrimp, which are primarily Whiteleg shrimp (P. vannamei). Northern Shrimp are Certified or a Good Alternative. White, Pink, and Brown shrimp are considered a Good Alternative, as are shrimp from Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and Vietnam. Avoid buying shrimp from India, Malaysia, Nicaragua, China, or Indonesia, as well as Argentine Red shrimp because populations have been depleted by overfishing, and large quantities of bycatch are discarded.

The Marine Stewardship Council only certifies wild fisheries, and has certified Northern Shrimp from the US, Canada, Nova Scotia, and Iceland, but has not certified wild trawl-caught shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Aquaculture Sustainability Council certifies shrimp that are produced using sustainable methods, so look for their seal on the package.

In summary, Shrimp are great food, and wild-caught shrimp are highly sustainable. But most of the shrimp on the market are cultivated, which are less sustainable due to mangrove destruction and waste production, but this situation is improving. And human rights abuses should deter you from buying shrimp from Thailand or China.

Finally, the Stevens Palatability Index (SPI) for shrimp is 5. I always keep a bag of frozen shrimp in my freezer, which I cook with stir fried vegetables or add to fish chowder. If I can’t get wild-caught shrimp, I prefer to buy shrimp from Ecuador or Vietnam, both places that are free of human rights issues, and have made major strides in decreasing their destruction of coastal mangroves. And we did so much damage to Vietnam during our war there, that the least we can do for them is buy their shrimp.

My sister and I still go to the Outer Banks for summer vacation. And we always have us a big feast of “newspaper shrimp”. And just for you, I’ll put another shrimp on the barbie.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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Resources

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/14/shrimp-sold-by-global-supermarkets-is-peeled-by-slave-labourers-in-thailand

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/inside-north-koreas-forced-labor-program-in-china

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/07/in-choice-of-mangroves-or-livelihood-vietnam-shrimp-farmers-choose-the-latter/

https://www.globalseafood.org/advocate/we-found-a-way-to-address-these-challenges-how-shrimp-producers-are-redesigning-farms-to-support-mangrove-restoration-and-coastal-resilience/

After arriving in Nemuro, Japan, with my family in January 1996, I began work in the marine laboratory of Dr. Jiro Kittaka, where I learned how to cultivate king crab larvae.

The City of Crabs

The first thing I noticed about Nemuro were the crabs. Giant red king crabs loom over storefronts. Crabs adorn the windows and roofs of all the seafood shops, some of which sell nothing but crabs. Lampposts and manhole covers sport pictures of crabs. Stores reward shoppers with “crab stamps”, which are redeemable for merchandise. Nemuro is a fishing community, and crabs are the most important seafood product, such that the City of Nemuro has adopted a red crab symbol as its official logo. A crab festival is held in October to honor the delectable crustaceans (just one of many parallels between Nemuro and Kodiak).

The crab thus celebrated is the Hanasaki-gani, or Hanasaki king crab Paralithodes brevipes (named for the port of Hanasaki just 6 miles south of Nemuro). It is a close cousin to Alaska’s own red king crab. So, you would think that king crabs must be abundant here, but in fact they are relatively scarce, having declined to such a low level that there is no local fishery now. Another parallel with Kodiak Island.

So where do all the crabs come from? Russia. More specifically, from the Kuril Islands, the closest of which are just 5 miles offshore. Russians took over the southern Kuril Islands after the end of WWII, including the Habomai Islets which are only 4.5 miles offshore, and enforce a borderline just three miles offshore with patrol boats. Now, Russian fishing boats catch the crabs in waters around the Kurils, then bring them to Hanasaki, and exchange them for valuable Yen. Or, rather, merchandise such as used cars (That’s where they all went!) and washing machines. As a result, Russian sailors are a common a sight in Nemuro, cruising the aisles of stores in their fur hats and coats. Americans, on the other hand, are as rare as, well… Americans, so I have been mistaken for Russian many times.

The people of Nemuro are of two minds about the Russians. On one hand, they encourage the Russian trade and welcome the visitors. Many street signs and shop names are printed in Russian as well as Japanese. At the same time, however, numerous signs around town proclaim “Give back the Northern Islands!”, and “Return of the occupied islands will ensure peace and friendly relations between countries”. The city of Nemuro has made it a major goal to obtain the repatriation of the islands and has taken a lead role in the negotiations. But seafood still comes first.

Japanese people love to eat hanasaki-gani, as well as ke-gani, the hair crab. They eat them raw, on sushi, or cooked, in the shell. They eat the soft abdomens (tail flaps) of crabs which have just molted. They eat juvenile crabs which have been dried and spiced. They even eat the egg masses. One wonders if this appetite has not contributed to the current state of affairs in crab populations.

But Japan is nothing if not resourceful, and their response to the lack of a favorite food is typically Japanese - study it and culture it. To accomplish these goals, two major facilities were constructed in the vicinity of Nemuro. One is a crab hatchery at Akkeshi, where king crabs and hair crabs are cultivated and released to the wild, in the hope that they will grow to adulthood. Unfortunately, no one knows whether they do or not, or whether such a program is actually detrimental to wild stocks. The other is the lab where I am now working.

Off to Work I Go

On weekdays I drive to the Research Institute for Marine Biological Science, located about 20 km east of Nemuro. At the time I arrived, the laboratory occupied a converted sea urchin hatchery, which was inadequate for the task, with poor wiring and a leaky roof. Right next door, however, a new laboratory is under construction. The new facility is being financed by the City of Nemuro and will be operated jointly by the City and Tokyo Science University in a cooperative venture. This is another interesting parallel with Kodiak, where a new, municipally funded marine laboratory was being planned (in 1996) to support crab research. [The Kodiak Fisheries Research Center was opened in 1998, and I worked there until I left Kodiak in 2006].

The laboratory’s director is Dr. Jiro Kittaka, and he is the reason I am here. Upon hearing from a colleague about Dr. Kittaka’s work with king crabs, I wrote to ask if I could come to work with him for a year, to learn more about crab culture, and to acquire skills and methods which I could bring back to Kodiak. After a year of communication with Kittaka-san, and negotiation with NOAA, my employer, I finally got permission to go to Japan for a year.

Part of that negotiation was me threatening to quit (ten years in Kodiak was giving me a severe case of cabin fever), then agreeing to staying on for at least two years after my “sabbatical”. While preparing to leave, the US government entered one of those dreaded shutdowns which not only held up my paycheck, but also my government passport and official travel orders. The Government reopened the first week of January 1996, then shut down again due to a massive snow dump in Washington DC. Nonetheless, my family and I boarded a plane to Seattle, where I was finally able to receive my passport two days before traveling on to Japan.

We finally arrived in late January 1996. And ever since then, I have been up to my ears in king crab larvae.

Below the Ice

The wind whistling in my ears almost obscures a low rumbling sound, like a giant grinding his teeth. Northward, in front of me, the ice extends as far as I can see, a jumbled landscape of white, punctured on the horizon by a sharp volcanic mountain rising from Kunashiri Island, 30 miles away in the Kurils. The wind causes waves in the sea of ice; slow undulations of the frozen surface, which culminate in slushy breakers as the ice rolls over in the surf zone. A loud splash startles me, and I turn to see an iceberg the size of a truck tip over and roll into the slush. Shivering from the chill, I turn and walk back into the laboratory.

Beneath the ice, on the black sandy seafloor, female Hanasaki-gani are cradling their eggs beneath their abdominal flaps. The eggs were extruded and fertilized last spring and have been incubating for an entire year. Now the embryonic larvae inside the eggs are fully developed, with large black eyes peering out to the unknown world. Inside their egg cases, they wiggle restlessly, straining at the confining membrane.

Perhaps it is the increase in daylight, perhaps a change in the tides, perhaps the gentle spring rain of phytoplankton drifting down from the springtime bloom in the surface waters. Perhaps it is simply the silent, steady, ticking away of a biological clock. Some cue, as yet unknown to man, signals the female crabs that Now is the Time! After dark, perhaps on a full moon, they rise up onto the tips of their legs and start to flap their abdomens. Gently waving back and forth, the larvae are shaken loose from their cocoon-like wrappings. Instantly they burst forth, pause a bit to get their bearings, determine which way is up, and start swimming.

At first, they don’t look anything like crabs but are smooth and straight like a shrimp. The first, or pre-zoeal form, even lacks the spines so characteristic of king crabs, because they would cause it to hang up in the egg mass, impeding its escape. Up they swim towards the light, which filters through the ice in muted blue tones. By the time they reach the undersurface of the ice, they have already molted once to the first larval stage, the first zoea. Not even an hour has passed since they were born.

Above the Ice

One morning in the laboratory, we find thousands of zoea larvae swimming about in the tank with the adult female crabs. During the next week, we collect several thousand every morning. A large female can produce 100,000 to 250,000 larvae, but we only have room to raise about 50,000. We place several thousand each in large clear plastic cylinders, about 4 feet high and 2 feet across. Each 100-liter tank holds 1000 to 2000 larvae. In some larger tanks we have placed up to 10,000 larvae. Then we inoculate the cylinders with a culture of diatoms, microscopic algae which drift and grow in the water. The crab larvae eat the diatoms, as well as larvae of brine shrimp, which are hatched and fed to the crabs daily. The diatom we feed them is called Thallasiosira nordenskjoldii; it forms chains of 8 to 16 individual cells, and the little crab larvae grab them with their claws and eat them like a strand of spaghetti.

The lab is unheated, and the large windows are kept open to prevent the water in tanks from heating up as the aluminum roof absorbs heat from the sun. Outside temperature is about -10° C, but inside, it is a balmy 5° C. Heaters in the larval tanks keep the temperature at 8° C, about 46° F. The sun streaming through the windows provides energy for the diatoms, which grow and reproduce. Within a day or two, the water in the culture tank is a rich golden brown, like amber beer. Which is fitting because all of the cylinders stand atop empty Kirin Beer crates – we like to say that Kirin supports our work. Within a week, our larvae have grown enough to molt to their second zoeal stage.

Outside the window, the sea ice drifts in and out with the wind. Some days it is too far out to see, on others it piles up against the shore. Under the ice, crab larvae grow much slower in the still near-freezing water than the ones in our laboratory. Some find good patches of food and survive, others starve slowly or become food for predators such as jellyfish and fish larvae. The survivors drift in the water currents for weeks before molting to the next stage.

Back in the lab, our larvae stuff themselves and grow fat on a rich diet of diatoms and brine shrimp. After another week they molt again, to the third and last zoeal stage. Although their bodies are transparent, their accumulated fat reserves make them appear bright red. Every 5 or 6 days, I change the water in their tanks; first I siphon all the larvae out into a net, then carefully place them in a large beaker of water. Then I drain the tank, rinse and wash it with fresh water, and refill it with clean seawater. Afterwards, I count the larvae back into the tank and add a fresh inoculation of diatoms.

About 3 weeks after hatching, before becoming bona fide crabs, the larvae molt to a transitional stage, called the glaucothoe, which looks like a crab designed by committee. It has large eyes and claws, like an adult crab, but it has kept the long shrimp-like tail for swimming. As soon as they molt to this stage, they start looking for a place to settle and will grip onto anything in their path. We hang small pieces of fine-mesh netting in their tanks, which they grip tightly; this not only keeps them out of each other’s way but also allows us to collect and count them each day for use in the next series of experiments. Overall, about 30% of our larvae survive to this stage. Those in the ocean probably fare much worse.

The Daily Grind

Kittaka-san has assigned me an office space in a separate building called the guest house. This building has three tatami mat rooms, two office spaces (mine doubles as a meeting room), a kitchen, restroom, and combination shower and laundry room. It is a very convenient place for visitors to stay. Kittaka-San has a staff of four people. One is the office manager – he basically works for the city, and takes car of managing the budget, ordering supplies, etc. Mr. Onoda is a lab technician with a biology degree who does much of the hands-on work in the lab. Mr. Akagi is a fisherman who is working for Kittaka in his off-season, and doing construction on the new lab when needed, and is more-or-less living at the lab. Onoda-San also stays there during the week. If the weather gets particularly bad, i.e. snow drifts on the road, Kittaka and others will stay here also. A young woman works as a combination secretary, janitor, coffee-maker, and general gopher. She brings me tea or coffee twice daily. Now if I could only train her to rub my feet (just kidding!!!).

Each afternoon at 3 pm, all the men gather in the conference room to discuss the day’s work. This is the traditional tea-time in Japan, known as O-san-Ji (honorable three o’clock). Office girl arrives with coffee or tea for everyone, then leaves. Kittaka-San asks each for a report in turn, to which he responds. All of this is in Japanese, so I don’t understand it, but I have a general idea. After the discussion, he translates some of the information for me, then asks my opinion. I respond in English, and some is understood by all, but he translates it back to them as well. Usually, I come to this meeting with data from the previous day that I have plotted in Excel, showing changes in survival of larvae, or density of diatoms. Kittaka and Onoda are amazed and ask me how I do this. I tell them I’m using a Japanese computer (Toshiba) and printer and offer to show them how to do it.

Around 5 pm, Kittaka-San announces that the meeting is over, and all bow their heads to each other, before returning to their business. This meeting is all very traditional Japanese, where the Sensei, or master/teacher sits with his disciples and passes his knowledge to them. They usually continue working for another few hours, but I am Gaijin and not held to those standards, so I go home to my family, and dinner.

But What Do the Crabs Think?

Because of the cold ocean temperature, larvae in the ocean do not become glaucothoe until many weeks later. Finding nothing in the water to cling to, they begin spiraling toward the bottom. What will they find there? Will there be shelter for them to hide in? Something to cling onto so they won’t be swept away by the current? Food for them to eat? Or a predator waiting to eat them? Will they keep on swimming if they don’t find suitable habitat? What is suitable habitat anyway? How can I find out? All of these questions ricochet through my brain as I drive home from the lab, while the bright orange sun setting over the frozen northern sea makes me feel as if I am driving into the Japanese flag.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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When I was a kid, my friends and I used to wander down to a creek about a mile from my house and look for crawdads. Sometimes we’d catch them with a little butterfly net, and sometimes we tried to catch them by hand. We never kept them though, and it never occurred to us that they might be edible. Likewise, I never could have predicted that someday I would be keeping a room full of them for scientific research. Or watching two perverse crustaceans defy the rulebook on copulation in a desktop aquarium.

Swamp Critters

Crayfish, crawfish, or Crawdads, or whatever you want to call them, are a staple food in the deep south of the United States. Many species exist around the world, but only a few are marketed for food. The most common of these is the red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii. Its natural range spreads across the southern states from Alabama, through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, but it has been introduced to many other states, including even Alaska, as well as Australia and SE Asia. And even though we call them cray-fish, they are definitely not a type of fish, but rather a crustacean, like crabs and lobsters.

The word crayfish is a mispronunciation of the French word ecrepisce, which derives from the German krebiz, a term for crab. Send those French speaking Acadians down into the Louisiana bayous for a couple of centuries, and ecrepisce comes back out of the swamps sounding more like crayfish.

From a biological perspective, crayfish are essentially lobsters in miniature. They look alike and share many habits but live in freshwater instead of saltwater. Unlike lobsters that are captured from the wild, however, the crayfish we eat as food are entirely cultivated. And even though they live in freshwater, I include them as “seafood” because for all intents and purposes, they are treated, cooked, sold, and served like any other seafood.

Cray-culture

Crayfish aquaculture is one of the great success stories of food production. Although red swamp crayfish comprise 90% of all US production, a few other species are also produced, including bait crayfish (Orconectes spp.) in the US, and signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) in Europe.

Crayfish aquaculture comes in two flavors: extensive, in outdoor ponds, or intensive, in indoor tanks. Most crayfish are grown on “Farms” that are actually more like well-managed private fisheries. In the autumn, broodstock, adult male and female crayfish, are captured from wild populations and introduced into prepared ponds of two to four hectares in size (2-4 ha). Or they may be placed in sinuous canals that wind among fields of rice. The adults dig burrows in the pond banks and dikes, and become self-sustaining, subsisting on worms, snails, insects, and other wild creatures.

Spawning, or rather mating, occurs naturally, and females produce several hundred eggs that attach to appendages on her abdomen, just like a lobster. After a few weeks, the juveniles hatch out as mini-adults and crawl around on her abdomen for a few days, until they are able to live by themselves and subsist on natural foods. The crayfish ponds attract many native birds and so also serve as good places for birdwatching and ecotourism.

By spring, the juvenile crayfish are big enough for market. Harvesting is done using baited traps that are conical or cylindrical. Each pond can produce up to 1000 kg per hectare. The biggest cost for crayfish aquaculture, after land acquisition, is bait, mainly consisting of fish, which can be up to ~50% of total production costs. Because the bait is usually forage fish, this is a non-essential use of marine protein, but unlike salmon culture, where the forage fish are used in feeds, for crayfish they are just used as bait. If you want to make a fortune in aquaculture, the best thing you could do would be to invent an effective artificial bait for crayfish harvesting.

In 2019 (the last year for which I could find reliable data), aquaculture in the United States produced about 74,000 metric tons (168 million pounds) of crayfish, of which over 90% came from Louisiana. That’s about twice the size of the American Lobster fishery. After catfish, crayfish is the second largest aquaculture product in the country. Other countries also produce crayfish; in 2024, Eastern Europe produced 340,000 tons, Southeast Asia 286,000 tons, and Australia tied the US with 74,000 tons.

Crayfish aquaculture is a major success for several reasons. One, the land for ponds is inexpensive, since much of it was converted from rice or cotton fields. Two, the broodstock is free, as is all of the food they eat. Three, the ponds are ecologically productive, supporting birds, frogs, fish and other wildlife. Four, crayfish can be grown in rotation with other crops such as rice or catfish. And five, there is very little waste – all of it is organic and recycled within the system. That makes crayfish culture a win-win situation for all concerned (except maybe the crayfish).

Mating Non-Rituals

At one point in my career, I volunteered to look after several dozen crayfish that were being kept by another professor, as a way of learning about them. Each cray was kept in a separate aquarium, and every other day, I would change their water and feed them. Once a week, I removed each female from her tank and placed her under a dissecting microscope, where I examined her abdominal appendages, called pleopods, of which there were five pairs. Each pleopod was about half an inch long and one eighth of an inch wide. About two weeks prior to spawning, small bumps appeared on the pleopods, which grew over time, and when they became swollen and white, that indicated she would spawn in another day or two. At that time, I placed a male crayfish into the tank with her and let them go about their business. Mating was encouraged with dim lighting, some mood music, and a little wine, which I enjoyed while I watched the proceedings.

In order to observe this process more closely, I kept a small aquarium on my desk for several months, with two crayfish in it. According to the crayfish sex manual (the “Crayma-Sutra”) the female is supposed to exude chemicals (pheromones) that serve as perfume to attract a male. The male is supposed to cuddle up close to her while he whispers into her ear (or whatever serves for that purpose) and charms her into allowing him to mate with her. At that point he is supposed to turn her over on her back, whereupon he uses a modified pleopod (called a “gonopod”) to insert sperm packets (spermatophores) into a pocket on her abdomen called the spermatheca. After which they both roll over and smoke a cigarette. No, JK about that. They only vape.

Notice I said “supposed to” multiple times. What actually happened was very different. The male (I’ll call him “George”) was completely indifferent to the charms of the female (whom I named “Annabelle” after my former mother-in-law). George spent most of his time curled up in a corner of the tank. Annabelle, on the other hand, was quite aggressive; she would frequently go up to him and badger him about with her claws, until he’d had enough, at which point he would flip his tail and jet off backwards to another corner and sulk.

After about a week of this, George had finally had enough. When Annabelle came over to bother him, he jumped up, rolled her over, gave his deposition, then quickly flipped back into his corner. Bada-bing, etc. Satisfied at last, Annabelle went back to her corner and began brooding.

Now, there’s more to crayfish sex than meets the eye. Like lobsters, the males have a pair of gonopods. Which to me begs the question “Which one does he use?” Watching the procreative process closely, I was surprised to see that George crossed his right gonopod across his body and used it to support his left gonopod while he inserted his spermatophores into her spermatheca, like holding a gun with both hands. Or something else. Then, he switched sides and used the left gonopod to hold up the right one while he deposited his second load. Ambidextrous, he was.

The Sperm-u-lator

Most types of industrial food production have gone to great lengths to selectively breed strains that are highly productive and disease resistant. One would think that a crop as valuable as crayfish would benefit from some selective breeding as well. But to do so would require a method for extracting sperm from particular males and using it to fertilize selected females via artificial insemination. By now, my scientist brain was racing down the track toward the inevitable question - How would one go about that?

Artificial insemination is common in the shrimp industry, and I had read that a mild shock could be used to stimulate a male shrimp to produce spermatophores. So, I rigged up a little miniature crayfish bed, complete with a strap to hold down the donor, and a drip line to keep him moist. Next to it was a small voltage generator with two pointed probes. It looked like a crustacean-sized version of Dr. Frankenstein’s operating table. I called it the “Sperm-u-lator”.

After strapping an unsuspecting male crayfish to the table, I touched his abdomen gently with the probes and turned on the generator. Nothing, no response. I dialed up the voltage. Again nothing. Dialed it up again. This time, his pleopods curled up and vibrated for a few seconds until I turned the current off, in fear of hurting him. I never did get him to ejaculate, but I did curl his toes. I probably could have finessed that process until I found the right level of current, but didn’t have time to pursue it further. As usual, I was ahead of my time, and fortune awaits the inventor who works out the kinks in this process.

Crayfish Boil

Crayfish are great food. They are nutritious, high in protein, and extremely low in fat. They can be bought live or frozen, and are usually boiled before being eaten, often in a big pot with corn, potatoes, maybe some Andouille sausage, and plenty of spices. A “crawfish boil” cooked up in a giant pot is a traditional meal in the deep south, especially around New Orleans and among “cajuns” (descendants of Acadian immigrants). They can also be served on salads or as crayfish tacos.

Although they are not a marine animal, SeafoodWatch has rated pond-cultured crayfish as a Best Choice, and wild-trapped crayfish as a Good Alternative. You should avoid buying crayfish from China, though, as their production is unregulated and uninspected, and rife with human rights violations.

The Stevens Palatability Index (SPI) for Crayfish is 5. I love me a crawfish boil, and I have great fun showing everybody the gonopods.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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Having arrived in Nemuro, Japan, in the middle of winter, with my wife Meri and six-year-old daughter Cailey, we are trying to figure out how to live here. But not as Americans. We want to live as Japanese do and integrate into the culture as much as possible. Is it feasible? Or will we always be Gaijin?

Money Makes the World Go Round – If you have it

6 February 1996

The major problem right now is access to money. I brought $1000 in traveler’s checks, which I cashed at a local bank, but we’re burning through them rapidly. NOAA, the agency I work for, expects me to use my official American Express credit card for all expenses, but no local businesses will accept it. Fortunately, I can use my personal Visa card at some local stores. I have sent multiple faxes to my supervisor in Kodiak, and my division director in Seattle, trying to get it sorted out. They want me to work through American Express, but the closest office is in Sapporo, hundreds of miles from here. I contacted the Seattle Branch of Hokkaido Bank, but they only process corporate accounts.

I’m supposed to receive $100/day per diem as a separate check from NOAA each month, but I can’t access it from my bank account, or with a Visa card. I am also supposed to send receipts for purchases to Seattle. We have had a number of expenses already including electric and phone service, car rental, and purchasing items for our Apaato such as futons and a rice cooker, which NOAA says should come out of my per diem. The exchange rate is currently 103.5 ¥ to the dollar. I had to pay 180,000 ¥ (about $1700) for “key money”, otherwise known as a bribe, to the owner of our Apaato, and NOAA will not cover it. Neither will they cover expenses for Japanese National Health Insurance ($350/month) or our apartment furnishings.

My banker in Kodiak (AKA Joyce, my next-door neighbor) has agreed to send me some money orders, which I can cash at the Post Office, so I have requested that she send me $2000 a month to cover our expenses. I hope I get it soon.

Fame without Fortune

I am the first foreign scientist to come to work in Nemuro and we are the first American family to live here, so we are quite the spectacle. Soon after Arriving in Nemuro, we met with the mayor and some of his staff. Some reporters were there with cameras, and a week later an article about us was published in the local Nemuro paper, as well as in Sapporo. Soon, people started appearing at our door offering us Japanese lessons, or requesting English lessons, or just offering to donate stuff. We were happy to accept a table and chairs for our dining room, but we had to rent a refrigerator. We haven’t found a laundromat here, so we couldn’t wash our clothes for two weeks until someone allowed us to use their washing machine.

There are only a few other foreigners here. Two young American men are here as Mormon missionaries; they are very friendly and haven’t tried to convert us. One young American woman is here to teach English in the local high school, and another is married to a local Japanese man. Occasionally someone mistakes us for Russians and tries to speak Russian to us. Locals do not like Russians because they have usurped the best fishing grounds, but they do business with them at the nearby Port of Hanasaki, so it’s not surprising we are mistakenly identified.

For the first two months our only method of communication with the US was via fax machine. I didn’t have a printer, so most of my faxes were handwritten, until I got permission from Seattle to buy a printer and have it shipped to me (even though I could have bought one here). Now I can type them out, and they are much easier to read. Mr. Honda from the Mayor’s office has offered to provide us with an internet dial-up connection using a phone cradle. He is apparently their IT person and has created a multi-router internet connection station in his home. I’m using America Online but dialing it up from our home phone to Sapporo is extremely expensive, so I set it to dial up after midnight when the rates are lower. After we go to bed, I hear the dial tone, the hissing of the dial up connection, and then a ping, and the iconic “You’ve Got Mail!”. I let out a big sigh of relief, then go to sleep knowing we are now connected to the rest of the world.

Mr. Honda’s wife, Mikiko, speaks passable English and has become good friends with Meri. Our daughter Cailey has become friends with Mari Ishigaki, the six-year-old daughter of another of the mayor’s staff, and who is fast becoming Cailey’s best friend. She lives a few blocks away, so it’s easy for them to get together for playdates. There is a bit of a language barrier, but it is soon overcome with Barbie Dolls and Make-Believe.

Around The Town

Hokkaido, and particularly Nemuro, is the end of the road for Japan. Cape Nosappu is the easternmost point in the country, and beyond here is only Russia. It’s cold and cloudy, the wind blows constantly, and sea ice piles up against the north shore of the peninsula. Few outsiders visit here because it’s off the beaten path, much like our hometown of Kodiak, Alaska. The highways are narrow and curvy, but the land is spacious and open. Most of the architecture in town is concrete, and there are many old-style buildings. Many things available in larger towns are not available in Nemuro because of its size and distance. Again, like Kodiak.

When I go to work with our only car, Meri and Cailey spend their days exploring the town on foot. Their base of operations is the “Famiry Depaato” store, which has home furnishings on the upper floor, and groceries and gifts on the lower floor. And most importantly they have a public toilet. We thought groceries in Kodiak were expensive, but here they cost twice as much. Most of them are wrapped in plastic, including individual ears of corn, tomatoes, etc. There are a number of small bakeries around town, and when Cailey wears out, a stop at the bakery helps her recharge. We found a small import shop that sells peanut butter, which is not common in Japan but is a necessity for us.

Cailey hasn’t started school yet, but most of the children go to after-school programs called Kumon. Meri and Cailey discovered the local Kumon school and have been going there regularly. It helps them learn a little bit of language, and introduces them to some of the locals, whom Cailey will be going to school with.

Although Nemuro is a small town, it has some very nice facilities. A spacious cultural center occupies the center of town, with a performance theater and rehearsal rooms. Across the street is a public swimming pool. We also discovered a local video shop that rents movies in English. We brought a small portable TV with a built in VHS player, so we can rent some of our favorite movies here. Meri loves musicals, I go for adventure and suspense, and Cailey likes cartoons. Our all-time favorite video, though, is The Beatles “Yellow Submarine”, which we’ve watched half a dozen times already. We can also get local TV channels, which we don’t understand, but we absolutely love watching sumo wrestling. It is a bizarre and fascinating ritual.

Meri was invited to join a local string symphony, and Mikiko drove her to the first rehearsal. There were eight other string players and a conductor. Not much English was spoken, but they all share the common language of music. Meri brought a violin and a viola and was asked to play first viola. She had not played it much recently, so she felt like she was really in the hot seat. But she dug in and made enough of an impression that they invited her back, so she considered her debut a success.

Comfort Food

The day we arrived in Nemuro it was -17°C (1.4° F). It is still cold, and only one room of our apaato is heated, so we are wearing long johns and most of the clothes we brought with us. We shipped 30 boxes of “necessities” from Kodiak, including clothing, household items, kitchen utensils, and Cailey’s clothing, games and toys, but they haven’t arrived yet. Not knowing if Cailey would eat Japanese food, we shipped several boxes if her favorite foods, which at six years old is primarily noodles, especially macaroni and cheese. To Japan. Where about all anybody eats is noodles and rice.

We discovered several small mom‘n pop restaurants in our neighborhood. Most are small, seating only about 20 people. Some have a grill at the table, where we can grill our own food, or have the waitress do it for us. One of our favorite meals is Okonomiyaki. It is made from eggs and batter, sort of a cross between a pancake and an omelet. First, we grill some vegetables, such as onions and mushrooms, then some meat such as chicken or beef. Then the waitress mixes it into a batter of eggs and flour and pours it on the grill, flipping it over once a few minutes later. When served with a tangy-sweet sauce and some grated bonito flakes, it is a uniquely delicious Japanese treat. (NOTE, I recently found frozen Okonomiyaki at Trader Joes, and eating it brought back wonderful memories).

Whenever we enter a restaurant the proprietor shouts out “Irashaimase!” (Welcome!). After patronizing some of these restaurants several times, the owners began to bring us little treats. Things that were not on the menu but were being harvested by local farmers or fishermen at this time of year. Strange seafoods, unusual vegetables, and dried fish. Some of it was good, some not so much. But it is a great experience to try them out anyway.

Sometimes, they test us by asking us if we like nato (pronounced “nah-toe”), which is made with a fermented chicken egg. I don’t know how this is done, but some say it is buried underground for a month or more. Then they crack it over hot rice and stir it in. It is slimy, stinky, and tastes like rotten eggs, which, essentially, it is. We always respond by holding our noses and shaking our heads, inciting laughter from our hosts. Nato is vile stuff. If you ever get a chance to try it, don’t.

Cailey loves noodles, so of course she could eat ramen, soba, udon, and oden noodles every day. So much for all the mac ‘n cheese we brought. She’s discovered a new favorite food here – octopus. Sometimes it’s cooked, sometimes raw, and often she will just eat a whole small, pickled octopus. They are bright red, and who knows what they have been dyed with or soaked in but if she will eat it, that’s OK with us. Octopus is called tako in Japanese, and Cailey is now known around town as Tako-Chan, the octopus kid.

We love sushi, but traditional sushi restaurants in Japan are expensive. But we have discovered the sushi-go-round, or Kaitenzushi, also known as “conveyor belt sushi”. In these restaurants, you sit at a table with a conveyor belt in front of you. The chef prepares dishes in the center of a U-shaped bar and places them on the conveyor belt, then you pick whichever ones you want as they go by in front of you. Prices vary from 100 to 500 yen per dish, and the color of the dish denotes its price. When you are done eating, the waitress totes up the dishes by color and gives you the bill. It is quite economical compared to the alternative, and we can dine for the equivalent of about $40.

Cailey thinks Kaitenzushi is phenomenal because she can pick whatever she wants. It is also helping her learn Japanese because we have taught her to request her favorite food. To do so, she stands up on her stool, and in her loudest six-year-old voice says “Sumimasen, Tako Kudasai!” (Excuse me, I would like octopus, please!”). The chef and patrons usually get a big kick out of hearing a blondish little American ordering in Japanese.

Too Much Stuff

Several weeks after arrival, our boxes finally arrived. They were shipped by FedEx to Japan, where they were held up for customs inspections for several weeks. They went through every box and removed some over-the-counter drugs (Sudafed) which are legal in the US but not in Japan. At first, we were asked to pay import duties, but after many faxes between Nemuro, Seattle, and Tokyo, we finally convinced the authorities that it was all personal stuff and managed to avoid the duties.

Included in our boxes were a year’s worth of clothing, including heavy clothing we needed the first month we were here. Meri packed up an entire year’s worth of educational materials for Cailey, including books, art materials, lesson plans, etc. We also shipped scuba gear (for me, in case I got the urge), ice skates (which Cailey outgrew before we received them), and a whole box of dress-up clothing for Cailey. [In retrospect, we didn’t need a lot of this stuff. If I ever do another long-term visit, I will just pack a week’s worth of clothing and buy the rest].

American Bulls in a Japanese China Shop

Japanese have a word to describe outsiders who do not know the culture and constantly embarrass themselves – Gaijin. It is meant to be an insult, but we’ve adopted the term as an honorarium. After all, we do feel like American Bulls in a Japanese China Shop.

But we are trying our best to settle in and are doing so bit by bit. Discovering all the unique and wonderful things about Japanese culture, food, and life. Discovering what we wish we had brought with us and what we could do without.

And beginning to wonder. How do you become immersed in a culture? How long does it take? How do you know when it has been achieved? Or will we always be Gaijin, outsiders looking in?

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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One of the things I loved about being a marine scientist was the opportunity it provided to be creative. In order to answer a scientific question, or test a hypothesis, I needed specific apparatus for that purpose. That sometimes meant inventing something that could be put into the ocean to observe or capture animals or finding a container in which to hold my study animals in the laboratory. And while some of them worked successfully, others were failures with descriptions ranging from dismal to spectacular.

The Underwater Mouse Trap

In 1991, using a two-person submarine called the Delta, I discovered that Tanner crabs (Chionoecetes bairdi) formed high density spawning aggregations in deep (200 m) water near Kodiak, AK.

The aggregations consisted of a large number of mounds, each containing hundreds of female crabs. But we didn’t know the maturity status of the crabs involved, or why they formed mounds. Using the sub’s grabber and some plastic milk crates, we were able to capture individual crabs, but I wanted to capture a complete (or partial) mound of crabs to see what it contained. In order to do that, I created a sort of underwater mouse trap. The trap consisted of two milk crates hinged together along one side, and held together by bungie cords. The trap was “set” by opening the gap between the baskets and holding them apart with a steel bar that was held in place with a pin. When the pin was removed, the bungie cords caused the two baskets to come together quickly with a loud “SNAP”, just like a mouse trap. In the lab, it worked perfectly, almost severing my hand in the process.

The idea was to use the submarine to lower the “trap” over a mound of crabs, then pull the pin to release the trap and capture the crabs. But before we took it out to sea, I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to test it in shallow water. Using scuba gear, I descended to the bottom of a shallow bay. My colleagues then lowered the trap into the water from a boat, and I pulled the pin. No SNAP. Instead, the baskets moved in slow motion, and dug into the muddy bay bottom, which prevented them from closing. What I had not realized was that the increased resistance caused by the density of water would prevent the baskets from moving rapidly or closing completely. In the water, the trap was a spectacular failure. But that test prevented us from wasting valuable ship and sub time trying it out. The lesson learned was “Never expect anything to work underwater like it does on land”.

The Awful Tower

More recently, my graduate students and I were studying the behavior of black sea bass (Centropristis striata) off the coast of Maryland. We started by placing Go-Pro cameras on fish traps to observe the fish going into and out of (yes, most of them escape) the traps. But we noticed that fish usually swam into the current, so we wondered if we could build a camera platform that would do the same. This time, rather than spend my time and effort building underwater contraptions, I recruited a senior engineering student, who would work under the supervision of my PhD student, Dan Cullen. The idea was to build a solid metal base with a rotating platform on top to hold the camera facing into the current. The student had lots of ideas about bracing, spindles, bushings, rotors, and vanes, so we gave him the tools and materials and let him go to town. What he came up with looked like a miniature, two-meter-tall version of the Eiffel tower with a wind vane on top (which we dubbed the “awful tower”). Dan and I had our misgivings about it because it was narrow and rather fragile, but we took it out for a test anyway. Besides, I like to let my students make their own mistakes to see what they can learn from the experience.

To test it, we chartered a fishing boat to take us fifteen miles offshore. The wind was blowing 15 knots, and seas were about 2 m high, so we were rocking around quite a bit. On our first attempt to launch the “tower”, we knocked the vane off. On our second attempt, we got it to the bottom, but the current knocked it over. On our third attempt, the whole device got slammed against the side of the boat by a wave and bent in half. That was the end of the awful tower – a dismal failure. The lesson learned was “Never underestimate the power of the ocean”. We finally built a fish-camera platform that was solid, square, and low to the ground so it was much more stable. But it didn’t rotate with the current – that invention is still waiting for its creator.

Thar She Blows!

During my first year as an Associate Professor at the University of Masschusetts, Dartmouth, I was desperate to obtain funding for my own research. That year, I submitted a dozen grant proposals. Most were in my field of knowledge (marine biology and fisheries), but some were definitely “out there”. One of these was a proposal to alert ships to the presence of whales by monitoring for whale spouts in order to avoid ship strikes.

Ship strikes are the leading cause of death for North Atlantic Right Whales, whereas entanglement with fishing gear is the major cause of whale deaths worldwide. The best way to prevent ship strikes is by enacting maximum speed limits when ships traverse known whale migration routes, which has been done in a number of locations. This allows both ship operators and whales the opportunity to avoid being hit.

My idea was to use infra-red cameras mounted on gimbaled, deck-mounted tracking devices of the sort used for movie cameras. Automated software would detect when a whale spout was sighted and alert the helmsman to its location. (AI software available today could do this easily, but at that time, it was a long shot). I even talked with some Hollywood people who rented and operated the equipment, to find out how it worked. The idea was so far out that even I wasn’t sure it would work. So, I wasn’t surprised or upset when my proposal was roundly rejected. Maybe not a dismal failure, more like a deflated balloon. The lesson learned was “Stick to what you know”. In the back of my mind, though, I felt like I was on to something, and I still think it could work.

Pouring Oil on the Water

The great thing about failing at a scientific test or experiment is that it creates an opportunity for another enterprising investigator to step in and succeed. If they can improve on your idea or design an alternative, they may be able to accomplish what you did not. Personally, I hope that some young scientist will try to tackle some of these problems someday and do a better job than I did. I will feel as if I helped pave the way for them by showing what DOESN’T work.

Speaking of whales, scientists have recently discovered a new species of whale hiding under their noses, with only 50 remaining members. The new species, named Balaenoptera ricei, or Rice’s whale, is a relative of the Bryde’s whale, and lives only in the Gulf of Mexico. The Biden administration proposed removing 6 million acres from a planned offshore oil and gas lease sale in the GoM to protect the whales from the consequences of future oil spills in the area. President Trump, true to form, recently forced a resolution by the “Endangered Species Committee” to exempt oil drilling in the Gulf from the Endangered Species Act, which is a direct threat to Rice’s whales. Now they are subject to being poisoned by oil spills in their habitat.

But the bigger threat, still, is being stricken by ships, due to the enormous amount of ship traffic traveling through the Gulf, and because the whales sleep on the surface at night, when they are most vulnerable to ship strikes.

Maybe it’s time someone invented an automatic whale detection device for use aboard ships. Something that might involve deck mounted camera systems, infra-red heat detection, and AI identification software? It seems like maybe an idea whose time has come.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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15 January, 1996

After two days of travel on planes, trains, buses, and automobiles we finally arrived in Nemuro, Japan. Having departed from Kodiak, Alaska, we flew to Seattle, then to Los Angeles, and from there to Narita, crossing back over the Aleutian Islands en route. From there we took a bus to Haneda Airport for our flight to Kushiro, an hour from Nemuro, because that is the closest airport.

We quickly learned that our method of traveling is not fit for Japanese facilities. Our giant Samsonite suitcases, with wheels on the sides, were too big for the escalators or the narrow airport aisles, not to mention hotel rooms and elevators. We were also carrying two of Meri’s violin cases, a (1996-vintage) computer in a bag, plus Cailey’s bags.

The mayor of Nemuro sent a car to pick us up in Kushiro but didn’t reckon on the amount and size of our luggage, so then had to request another car to collect the rest of it. We also shipped via FedEx 30 boxes of stuff we thought we’d need for a year of living in Japan, which has not arrived yet, and most of which we could probably do without.

Traveling with me are my wife Meri and my six-year-old daughter Cailey, who thinks this is a great adventure for a few days. I’m here to work with Dr. Jiro Kittaka, a pioneer of crustacean aquaculture, to learn cultivation techniques for king crabs, and conduct experiments on larval settlement behavior. At least that’s the plan.

Nemuro is a small town (by Japanese standards) of about 40,000 people. It is the furthest east community on Hokkaido, and therefore, in Japan. The place where the sun rises first. At this time of year, it is flat, cold, and frozen solid. Even the ocean is frozen over and the shoreline is covered with large chunks of ice pushed up by the relentless wind. The surrounding country is mostly flat farmland, and we were surprised we could travel for miles without seeing many houses.

Although farming is important, a big part of the economy is based on fishing, especially for king crabs. Two local species are the red king crab, Paralithodes camtschaticus, known locally as Taraba-gani, and the spiny or brown king crab Paralithodes brevipes, known locally as Hanasaki-gani, because it is mainly landed in the small port of Hanasaki, a few miles away. King crabs are so revered here that the town of Nemuro has placed their likenesses on many public facilities, including sewer lids.

We immediately discovered that our credit cards are essentially worthless here. I cannot use either a personal card nor a government issued American Express card to get cash advances from either an ATM or a bank. The only places that accept them are the department/grocery store (known as “Famiry Depaato”) and the gas station. Fortunately, I brought some traveler’s checks which we are currently living on.

Adoraburu Apaato

21 January 1996

We spent the first week getting settled into our apartment (Apaato) in Nemuro. It was located for us by Kittaka-San, and it is a cold, uninsulated, concrete building with no central heat or furnishings. The address on it says “Adoraburu”, which I think is a mispronunciation of the English word “Adorable”. We had to supply our own gas heater (donated by Kittaka), a two-burner stove (rented from the gas company), and kitchen table and chairs (salvaged from a nearby dumpster). People in Japan do not like old things and tend to throw out perfectly serviceable stuff, like a plastic washing machine that plugs into the sink faucet (also from Dumpster-zon).

Our Adoraburu Apaato has three rooms and a bathroom. One room is the kitchen/dining room with heater; one is an unheated “living” room; the floor of the third “sleeping room” is covered with tatami mats. We had to buy (Expensive!) futons and quilted blankets to sleep on/in. But the bathroom is the best room by far.

The outer part of the bathroom contains a sink and dressing area. The shower and tub are in a separate enclosed room that is completely waterproof. To bathe, you first fill the tub with hot water. Before getting in, you sit on a stool next to the tub and wash using a sprayer attached to the wall. Only after you are clean do you get into the short, deep tub for a soak. Traditionally, Papa-san gets the first soak, then Mama-san, followed by the children, each getting successively cooler water.

The toilet is even more fun. It looks normal, butt (pun intended)… the seat is heated (definitely the right priority for cold mornings). On the wall next to the toilet is a box with numerous buttons. Pressing the blue one causes a tube to jut out from the toilet and squirt your ass with warm water. Women press the pink one which squirts water on their nether lands like a bidet. The yellow button turns on the fan which blows warm air over your bottom to dry it off. There is toilet paper, but after this much fun, who needs it?

Speaking of fun, we have had earthquakes almost daily. On our first night here, the hotel shook us awake. We threw on our coats and ran downstairs to the lobby, but the few people there did not seem concerned about it. Newer buildings are built to withstand quakes, which are so common that the locals don’t get excited about them.

We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto

We are really pushing the envelope of adventure on this trip. Not only do we not speak the language but can’t read the signs and do not know the customs. We read and brought many books about living in Japan, but many things are so different, it is like being struck deaf, dumb, and blind all at once (Okay, so maybe not that bad). Local people are very friendly; they wear similar clothes and live in houses similar to ours (but smaller). Although many foods are recognizable, many are unfamiliar to us. Grocery shopping is a big experiment, because we are not quite sure what we are buying (is it milk? Yogurt? Or something else?).

Japan uses three separate alphabets. I spent months practicing reading and writing Hiragana, so I can read a bit of it. Katakana is used primarily to mimic phonetic sounds of English (as in “Koka Kora and Hambaaga”). But Kanji, the Chinese symbolic language, is impenetrable. Fortunately, Kittaka-San speaks good English, and has managed to smooth the way over most of our initial hurdles. But getting money is still a problem.

Saved by the Post Office

1 February, 1996

Over the last two weeks, I sent multiple requests back to Kodiak about various methods of payment. The first money orders I received were not acceptable to the bank. After several tries, we found that only USPS Money Orders were valid here. I can cash them at the bank or at the post office, where many people keep accounts, and which is actually quicker and easier. Eventually, I managed to convince the manager of my bank in Kodiak, who happens to be my next-door neighbor, to withdraw money from my account monthly and send it to me as a USPS money order.

I had thought about buying a used car, but they are not available here. Japanese people don’t buy used stuff, and Japan subsidizes their auto industry by levying hefty taxes on cars more than eight years old, such that people actually pay to have them taken away (but where to?). Kittaka-San finally found us a car to rent from a local garage for about $300 a month, which is quite reasonable by any standards. It is a Toyota Camry diesel and gets great gas mileage. They drive on the “wrong” side of the road here, though, so learning to shift with my left hand took a bit of practice. Now if I could only figure out which lever controls the wipers and which the turn signals.

Next week I start work, and Cailey starts first grade. Both in Japanese. The adventure is just beginning.

Sayonara for now. Mo Sukoshi!

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As my regular readers know, I have posted two previous articles about deep-sea mining (DSM) for polymetallic nodules. Part 1 of that series addressed the background, methods, and potential impacts of DSM, and Part 2 discussed observed ecological impacts of DSM and how they are determined.

In 2025, The Metals Company submitted two applications to NOAA for exploration of deep seafloor resources in the Pacific Ocean, and NOAA asked for public comments to be made by February 20. I submitted comments about these applications and, as requested by several of my readers, I am sharing those comments with you in this post. These comments are not to be construed as collectively in opposition to, nor in favor of, deep-sea mining in general, but rather pertaining to these specific applications, and the application process.

Comments on TMC Mining Applications, Docket Nos. NOAA–NOS–2025–0702 and NOAA–NOS–2025–1330

Before going into detailed critiques of the applications, I would like to provide some positive feedback on them. I do this to show that I am approaching this process with an objective viewpoint and am not biased towards any particular outcome.

Positive Comments

1. The exploration and research plans are detailed and comprehensive, especially regarding plans for assessment of benthic and epibenthic diversity, presence of protected species, and seasonal variations. A diverse array of equipment and technology are described that appear to be appropriate and necessary for the work.

2. The exploration and research plan appear to meet ISA requirements. The objectives described in the document, concerning exploration and baseline surveys, appear to meet the goals established by the International Seabed Authority in their document “Recommendations for the guidance of contractors for the assessment of the possible environmental impacts arising from exploration for marine minerals in the Area”. See https://www.isa.org.jm/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2315256E.pdf

3. The application is responsive to NOAA Guidelines. Responses to NOAA requirements and guidelines appear to be appropriate and comprehensive.

4. Interaction with fisheries (or lack of) seems acceptable. The applications claim that “…interaction between fishing vessels and TMCs exploration activities are expected to rarely occur.” Based on the data showing fishing activities, and independent corroboration by this reviewer at https://globalfishingwatch.org/map, this seems to be a reasonable conclusion.

The remainder of my comments are mostly critical

1. Does NOAA have authority to issue permits for mining in International waters?

I question whether the United States and NOAA have jurisdiction to issue permits for deep-sea mining in international waters. The United States is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and granting mining licenses unilaterally undermines international law and weakens global cooperation. This application should have been submitted to the ISA instead.

2. The Applications are premature and invalid because ISA has not completed establishing regulations for DSM

In accordance with UNCLOS and the 1994 Agreement, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has undertaken work since 2014 to develop regulations for the exploitation of mineral resources in the Area.

See https://isa.org.jm/the-mining-code/draft-exploitation-regulations-2/

The current status of these negotiations, however, is incomplete. According to ISA press releases:

On 5 December 2024, the ISA President presented the Compilation of Proposals for the Draft Exploitation Regulations (ISBA/30/C/CRP.3)….During the second part of its thirtieth session (7-18 July 2025), the Council will hold negotiations on the remaining sections of the Revised Consolidated Text of the Draft Exploitation Regulations (ISBA/30/C/CRP.1) from draft regulation 56 to 107.

Conclusion: These negotiations have not been completed. Furthermore, the unapproved guidelines explicitly state that “Exploitation in the Area shall only commence: (a) once all Phase 1 Standards and Guidelines, Phase 2 Standards and Guidelines and Phase 3 Standards and Guidelines have been adopted;” Therefore, since the Regulations have not yet been adopted, any exploitation of resources is in violation of ISA principles.

On 9 December 2025, ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho addressed the United Nations General Assembly emphasizing that the Mining Code must be adopted by a multilateral framework and is a prerequisite for any future commercial activities in the Area, stating that the ISA´s Council “repeatedly affirmed that there should be no exploitation of deep-sea minerals in the absence of regulations.”

Therefore, this application is in violation of ISA guidelines and draft regulations.

3. TMC is not a recognized Contractor to the ISA for minerals exploitation

All parties planning to conduct deep-sea mining must become Contractors to the ISA in order for them to regulate mining activities and process royalties. Although NAURU and TONGA have had contracts for Exploration, they will expire in July 2026 and January 2027, respectively. Applying for permission from the US NOAA is circumventing the ISA contractor process. See https://isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts/polymetallic-nodules/

4. TMC has not committed to paying Royalties to ISA for international benefit

ISA Draft Regulation 64 (ISBA/28/FC/4) states that all contractors must pay “…a royalty in respect of the Mineral-bearing ore sold or removed without sale from the Contract Area…” to the ISA, in order to “promote equitable sharing of financial benefits from deep-sea mining,…”.

These funds would be used to create a “seabed sustainability fund … dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean, in particular areas beyond national jurisdiction, for the benefit of humankind.” https://www.isa.org.jm/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2308964E.pdf , para. 17.

Funds would be used to support marine scientific research, capacity development, and technology transfer to developing States, in addition to conservation and sustainable use of the ocean, regional marine scientific and technological centers, capacity building, and scientific research. Such funds are only available to signatories of UNCLOS of which the US is NOT.

Because they are not a registered contractor to the ISA, TMC has not committed to paying royalties, and thus is not contributing to the shared international benefits of deep-sea mining.

5. ISA guidelines require specific actions – will these be completed, and when?

• A cruise report with station list, list of activities and other relevant metadata should be submitted to the secretariat of the Authority within one year of the completion of the cruise. No date for completing a cruise report has been proposed.

• The contractor should provide the Authority with all relevant data, data standards and inventories, including raw environmental data in the format agreed with the Authority. No date for completing this has been proposed.

• Submit representative examples of any remaining good-quality biological, mineral and molecular samples are archived to an appropriate long-term storage facility. The TMC proposal does not provide any specifics regarding where, when, and how this will be done.

• All data relating to the protection and preservation of the marine environment, other than equipment design data, collected pursuant to the recommendations contained in paragraphs 24 and 38, should be transmitted to the Secretary-General to be freely available, subject to confidentiality requirements as contained in the relevant regulations. No proposal for this has been provided.

6. Unforeseen Impacts have not been addressed

Areas that are rich in polymetallic nodules are extremely diverse and support organisms such as alcyonacean and antipatharian corals that are absent compared to nodule-free regions1. Deep-sea mining activities may cause irreversible damage to vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems, with complex impact mechanisms spanning significant temporal and spatial scales2. The applications being reviewed have not addressed the impacts listed below:

• Abyssal Diversity Loss. We have little scientific knowledge of abyssal ecosystems and their diversity. Many marine organisms produce metabolic byproducts that are extremely useful for medical or other applications, yet we have not determined what lives in the deep sea, nor what chemical compounds they produce. Terrestrial studies have shown that organisms in diverse ecosystems produce a high diversity of metabolic compounds, compared to those in less diverse ecosystems. Thus, reducing the diversity of abyssal ecosystems will probably also reduce the diversity of their chemical and genetic signatures and deprive us of potentially useful future compounds. Although extensive baseline studies have been conducted and are planned for the future, the diversity of genetic profiles and metabolic products also need to be determined prior to mining activities.

• Recovery Debt. Polymetallic nodules, and mining operations to recover them, occur in some of the deepest parts of the ocean, among seafloor abyssal communities of living organisms about which we know virtually nothing. Two recent studies have shown that deep-sea mining (DSM) will create long term, probably permanent impacts on fragile habitats3 4. Ecosystems recovering from disturbance typically undergo permanent losses of 50% of organisms and 30% of diversity, thus suffering from a “recovery debt” that is never fully repaid5. Many organisms specific to nodule communities, such as sponges and corals, are physically attached to the nodules, thus removal of nodules makes any such recovery impossible. Recovery of deep-sea communities could take decades or centuries, and some species may become extinct as a result.

• Light and Noise Pollution: Noise and light produced by mining equipment will exceed ranges to which deep-sea organisms are adapted and may cause permanent damage. Specifically, sensitive photoreceptor organs may be damaged or destroyed by bright lights. Noise generated by surface vessels or activities may affect the behavior of marine mammals, mask communication, or damage auditory organs. These proposals do not address ways to reduce, avoid, or mitigate such impacts.

• Carbon Release. The deep seabed has accumulated vast quantities of carbon over millions of years of surface productivity. Deep-sea mining could release large quantities of stored CO₂ from the seafloor in the form of CO₂, methane, and other products. All of this will contribute to excess CO₂ in the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming. Methods for mitigation or monitoring of carbon release need to be included in mining applications and operations.

• Accidents and Failures. In such a complex undertaking as deep-sea mining, there is great potential for technical risks, accidents, and failures. Much attention has been paid to the potential methods of nodule extraction, but how to mitigate or recover from these has been virtually ignored. Potential accidents could include major seafloor disturbance due to unexpected conditions, loss of exploration or mining vehicles, unexpected major discharges of benthic sediments or petroleum products, etc. The applications make no mention of how TMC will plan for or mitigate such events. The words “accident”, “spill”, “release”, and “damage” do not occur in either of the applications. The words “disturbed” and “disturbance” appear only in relation to the collection and utility of box-core samples. The word “discharge” appears only in relation to depths and volumes of predicted sediment discharges. The discussion of safety and risk assessment is limited to that of humans aboard vessels. The application states that “TMC USA will develop and maintain an Emergency Response and Contingency Plan” but that is not included with the application. TMC needs to provide a comprehensive plan for marine accidents or spills.

7. Other Specific Comments:

• Timeline redaction is unacceptable. For both applications (-0702 and -1330) the “Plan” for exploration supposedly laid out in a 10-year timeline is completely redacted. This precludes any evaluation of the scale and scope of activities and is unacceptable to this reviewer.

• Application -0702 exceeds the regulatory limit on license area. It states that: “The total area of the exploration plan for any one license must not exceed 150,000 square kilometers”. TMC USA-A covers 65,186.7 km², and TMC USA B covers 121,789 km². Neither application exceeds the 150,000 km2 regulatory limit.” But collectively they cover 186,976 km² which exceeds the limit. This seems to violate the regulations.

• What are “Industry best practices”? Both applications refer to “Industry best practices”. What are these? Where are they defined? This industry is in its infancy; it doesn’t seem to have existed long enough to establish “Best practices”. These need to be clearly defined.

Final Thoughts

In the last year the US Government has removed many qualified employees from public service and replaced them with political appointees with no credentials or experience other than loyalty to the President. The President has also pressured his appointees, including cabinet secretaries and agency directors, to act according to his preferences rather than according to law. We also know that many government contracts and permits have been awarded to entities that provide favors, financial support, or compensation to the President, his family, and his businesses. Thus, despite all of the rules, regulations, and procedures promulgated by NOAA, regulation and enforcement of deep-sea mining are all subject to presidential whims and may be disregarded entirely in favor of individuals or entities seeking his favor. In other words, this entire process may be disregarded for arbitrary and capricious reasons. Therefore, my final question is:

What guarantee does the public have that NOAA will honor any of these regulatory requirements?

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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When one thinks of lobster, one imagines a lonely fisherman (or woman) on their boat in the early morning, battling the elements, the weather, and the waves to pull up wooden pots full of delicious crustaceans. That image is partly true (the boat, the waves, the weather), but most pots are now made of plastic-coated wire. Nonetheless, our image of the lobsterman (or woman, don’t forget) is the down-east version of the American Cowboy, an independent hunter of the ocean’s bounty. Lobstering is more of a lifestyle, and an obsession, than a job title.

The American Lobster Homarus americanus often referred to as the Maine, or clawed lobster exists from North Carolina to Labrador, and is one of the most sought after and valuable seafoods in North America. The only other species of clawed lobster is the European lobster Homarus gammarus, common to Norway, the British Isles, and North Atlantic.

Prior to the 19^th century, lobsters were so abundant in New England that they were used for fertilizer. Most people did not eat lobsters unless they were desperate. Supposedly, laws were written to prohibit the feeding of lobsters to prisoners too often. But after the improvement of refrigeration and transportation technology, lobsters became desirable and are now considered a luxury food item.

Lobsters are caught primarily by traps but may also be caught (as bycatch) in trawls, or by recreational divers. The typical Maine lobster boat that fishes inshore waters is about 10 m in length, but larger boats up to 25 m fish further offshore on Georges Bank. In 2024, 119 million pounds were landed in the United States, worth $515 Million. They are often sold whole, from chilled tanks in stores or restaurants, but may also be frozen as tails or meat. The meats are commonly used in salads and lobster rolls, that iconic New England sandwich.

Lobster is such an icon of Maine and New England that much has been written about them. The Secret Life of Lobsters, by Trevor Corson focuses on the lifestyles of lobsters and the scientists that study them. In The Lobster Chronicles, Linda Greenlaw writes about her life as a lobster fisherwoman, and life in a small island fishing community. Both are well worth your time.

Pissing, not Kissing

Lobsters are greenish brown in color, though rare genetic oddities may be blue, orange, or maybe two colors split down the middle. The claws are unequal in size, one being a large “crusher” and the other a sharp-toothed “cutter”. The largest claw can be on either side, so lobsters may be righty or lefty. Lobsters can live up to 100 years, and weigh up to 44 pounds, but most lobsters sold on the market are less than two pounds.

Lobsters generally live in burrows under rocks and have complicated mating rituals that involve pissing rather than kissing. A dominant male will sit in his burrow and release urine from a pore beneath his eyestalks. Eew, Gross! You say, but this is the best place for it because it gets blown away from him along with the exhalant current from his gills. Thus, he blows “pisses” instead of kisses out of his burrow. Among local females, the largest and most dominant will claim space outside his burrow and blow her urine kisses back into the burrow. If the male approves of her perfume, he will entice her into his burrow and mate with her.

The male uses a specialized pair of appendages called gonopods, which operate like a hypodermic syringe. Sperm packets (spermatophores) are extruded from a pore at the base of the fifth legs, travel into a groove in the gonopod, and are injected into a pocket on the female’s abdomen, called the spermatheca.

After their crustacean copulation is consummated, the annointed female leaves the burrow, and the next lower female in the Homarid hierarchy hurries to the lobster lounge to take her place, and repeats the ritual with Top-Gun male lobster.

After some time, which may be months, the female extrudes eggs from ducts at the base of her third pair of legs. These are fertilized externally with sperm from her spermatheca, and attach to her abdomen. Female lobsters reproduce only every other year and produce about 5000-10,000 eggs each time. The eggs develop for several months until they hatch into small swimming larvae. Lobster larvae molt through four swimming larval stages before settling to the bottom as a juvenile lobster about 3 cm in length.

Fishers primarily keep male lobsters. They can keep female lobsters that don’t have eggs, but if she has eggs (what they call a “berried” female), they will (voluntarily) clip a V-notch into her tail flap and release her. The next time that lobster is caught, the V-notch identifies it as a mature female that should be released.

Lobster Shell Disease

Lobstering was once the primary occupation of many fishers in New England. But the lobster population in Southern New England (South of Cape Cod) has been declining since 1998 and is now commercially extinct. This is primarily the result of epizootic lobster shell disease (ESD), a progressively severe erosion of the carapace caused by a common bacterium that grows on all lobster shells. Bacterial density on diseased lobsters is 100-10,000 times greater than on healthy lobsters. ESD does not affect the internal organs or meat flavor and is not highly contagious. But the lobsters are ugly looking, and consumers don’t want to buy them, so fishers tend to throw them back. This has the unintended effect of reducing the proportion of healthy lobsters in the population and increasing the proportion of diseased lobsters.

The advent of ESD has been associated with warming ocean temperatures, but the mechanism is not understood. It may have to do with causing faster growth and weaker shells, or early maturity causing smaller lobsters to produce fewer eggs. Some scientists even suggested it was the result of eating primarily bait in lobster traps. This was called the “junk food hypothesis” because bait is primarily menhaden, which is not a typical lobster food.

Video camera studies have shown that up to fifteen lobsters may enter and exit a trap before one is caught; or maybe one lobster enters and escapes fifteen times. Either way, the lobsters are using the traps as lobster restaurants, and the bait is a major nutritional subsidy.

As a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, I studied ESD with my students for several years using nitrogen isotopes, which can give a fingerprint of the lobster’s diet. What we learned was that wild lobsters did eat lots of fish bait, but ESD severity was not associated with the diet they consumed, and lobsters became healthy after they molted their shells. We also learned that the eggs of female lobsters with signs of ESD were larger and contained more energy than those of healthy lobsters. This may have been a “last-ditch” effort to reproduce before death but was more likely because larger lobsters not only produce larger eggs but also generally had more advanced disease symptoms.

As a result of declining populations, lobster fisheries in Southern New England have been closed, and many fishers have converted to fishing for conchs (Channeled whelk Busycotypus canaliculatus) or black sea bass. This had led to an exponential increase in the demand for conch bait, which were traditionally horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs are a critical species along the Eastern seaboard because their eggs are an important nutritional source for migrating seabirds, and they are also used to produce Limulus amoebocyte lysate which is valuable for detecting bacterial contamination in vaccines and medical products. So, the decline of lobsters is putting pressure on another already over-utilized resource.

The Trouble with Traps

Whales often become entangled in lobster trap lines, and entanglement is the second most common cause of whale deaths, after ship strikes. The major migratory routes for northern right whales Eubalaena glacialis go right through some of the most heavily fished lobster ground on Georges Bank and Massachusetts waters. NOAA and state management agencies have been trying to develop methods to prevent entanglement. Some of these include weak links, galvanic timed releases (GTRs), whale safe rope with breaking strength <1000 pounds, and time-tension line cutters. One of the most promising methods is to use ropeless traps that don’t release a buoy line until it is triggered by an ultrasonic signal from a boat. I wrote about these subjects in a previous article.

But these are expensive solutions, and one of the most effective is just to reduce the number of traplines by attaching multiple traps per line. Typically, every trap has its own buoy line, but if 10 or more traps were connected to a single groundline, they would only need two buoys, one at each end. NOAA has promulgated rules for reducing traplines, but there are still too many in the water. In addition, the fishery is heavily overcapitalized – they could catch the same number of lobsters with about half the number of traps currently in use. Another effective solution is mapping of traps and avoidance of overlapping between traps and whale migration routes.

Irrational Exuberance

Despite the problems with ESD and traplines in Southern New England, lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine have increased exponentially. Prior to 1995 lobster landings in the US were about 40 million pounds per year, but since 2010 have exceeded 100 million pounds annually. “Peak Lobster” was reached in 2016 with landings of 71,278 metric tons (157 million pounds); since then, landings have declined to about 46,000 tons (~ 101 million lbs) in 2025. Still, dockside prices in Maine were $5.85 per pound (paid to fishermen), the fourth highest in history, making the fishery worth almost $700 million.

How is this possible when so many lobsters are dying due to climate change? And how is it possible to maintain such high catch levels in a fishery with no catch limits, no IFQ management, and where discarding females with eggs is discretionary? It reminds me of the “irrational exuberance” of previous stock market surges. One possibility is that the collapse of Atlantic cod populations removed the biggest predator of lobsters, so that now many more juveniles are surviving to adulthood.

More recently, landings have started to decline, however, suggesting either that the ecosystem’s carrying capacity has been reached, or that ocean warming and ESD is starting to have a larger impact on lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine. And some say the lobsters have started moving into Canadian waters to avoid either increased temperatures or tariffs.

To Eat, or Not To Eat, That is the Question

So, should you eat lobster? That depends. Despite increased landings in Maine, SeaFoodWatch has rated the lobster fishery poorly, labeling it as AVOID, because of whale entanglement. The Marine Stewardship Council, on the other hand has Certified lobsters from Maine, but withdrawn the Certification from Nova Scotia.

Lobster is a highly nutritious seafood. It is low in calories, and extremely low in saturated fats. It has medium to high levels of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, sodium, and potassium. If you are concerned about protecting right whales, you might want to avoid buying lobster. But if you are traveling in Maine and have the opportunity to purchase fresh lobster right off the boat, it is a treat not to be missed.

The Stevens Palatability Index (SPI) for lobster is 5. I love fresh lobster, but due to its expense I typically only buy it when I’m in New England. However, I will fork out $25 for a lobster roll anytime and anywhere. And don’t forget to bring me a bib!

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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In 1991, I made an amazing discovery with a two-person submarine called the Delta. In a small area of Chiniak Bay, near Kodiak, Alaska, over 100,000 female Tanner Crabs had aggregated in 600 feet of water, where they climbed up on top of each other forming meter-high mounds containing hundreds of crabs. Hundreds of such piles formed in an area the size of a football stadium, while a few thousand males held a tailgate party in the surrounding seafloor. After diving on them every day for two weeks, I still didn’t know what it was about.

Males are Mostly Superfluous (ask any female)

The discovery of crab aggregation was an important breakthrough in our understanding of Tanner Crab biology and led to two publications 1 2 .The most important result was that 97% of the male crabs found in mating pairs were old-shell crabs, at least a year past their terminal molt. But the crab fishery targeted primarily recently molted new-shell males, meaning they were removing them before they ever had a chance to mate. Another implication was that reproduction was geographically isolated; it depended on female crabs that were concentrated in a very small area, and a few nearby males, whereas most of the remaining males were scattered over many miles of seafloor too far away from females to participate in mating. That meant that most of the males were surplus to requirements.

My success in 1991 gave me “scientific capital” that helped me continue to obtain grant money. For the next five years I returned to Chiniak Bay to study Tanner crab aggregation with the Delta submarine and a leased remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Every year led to different levels of discovery and disappointment, because we kept missing the main event, seeing mound formation on only one or two dates. And though each year was a fascinating story by itself, telling them would require more verbiage on my part, and more patience on yours, than space allows, so I must condense.

What we learned was that the center of crab aggregation moved up to 1 km each year, so that 4-5 days were required each year just to find them again, which was an expensive use of submarine time. In one year, we were too late, and the crabs had already mated and produced new eggs. In another we were too early and the crabs stayed buried in the mud. In 1995 I began leasing a Phantom HD-2 ROV which was much cheaper than the Delta submersible and allowed us to spread our observations over a six-week period, but we still did not catch the aggregation event. It was time to regroup.

After 1995, I was frustrated, out of funding, and ready to do something completely different. In January 1996, I took my wife and six-year-old daughter to Japan, where I would spend the next year learning how to cultivate king crabs in a marine lab. That was an amazing experience and adventure and deserves much more time in later posts, but for now, it was a good way to get my head out of the ocean for a while. In Japan I had learned a new term for my crab mounds, Kani-yama, or Crab Mountains. We returned to Kodiak in January of 1997, and by the following year, I was out chasing crabs again.

When the Moon is in the Seventh House

In 1998, I returned to the Tanner Crab project with new eyes. My plan was to have a fresh look at all of the data we had collected over five years of research. On a large piece of graph paper that covered most of my desk (old school, but effective), I laid out all of the relevant data; the dates we dove in the Delta, the dates we observed crab aggregations, the dates we did not see aggregations. Superimposed on that, I laid out tide schedules, dates of the full and new moons, and the dates of the highest and lowest tides. On top of that, I plotted wind speed, cloud cover, and storm days. And finally, from the Delta’s data logger, I added water temperature and salinity. Each type of information was marked with a different symbol and color.

To the casual observer, it might have looked like a piece of cross-stitch work. Five lines snaked across the page, one for each year, dotted with occasional squares, triangles, and circles. For days, I did little more than stare at it, seeing nothing but chaos. What did it mean? Somewhere in that arrangement of symbols was the answer, I knew, and I willed it to reveal its hidden secrets to me.

Slowly, the intricate lacework of lines and dots began to form a pattern. As I looked at the symbols representing the full moon, I realized they made a diagonal line across the page. Paralleling that line was another line representing the highest monthly tide. Each full moon appeared 11 days earlier (to the left) in the subsequent year. It seemed odd, until I realized that a 365-day year included twelve lunar cycles of 29.5 days, with 11 days left over. Of course. Que stupido! It now made perfect sense. Eureka! I had found it.

We had first seen crab mounds during the high spring tide in April 1991. In all subsequent years, our observations of crab mounds occurred within 2 days of the highest monthly tide of April or May. The cue for mound formation must be the tide, I thought, which was 11 days earlier each year. That was the only logical explanation.

In several years, we had retrieved female crabs from the mounds, and some crabs had released larvae in buckets aboard ship. At the time, I had thought it accidental, but maybe it wasn’t. Were the crabs aggregating in order to hatch their larvae? Was that their secret purpose?

Larval Launch Pads

Based on these clues, Bill Donaldson and I hypothesized that the crab mounds were serving as “larval launch pads” and the timing of launch was signaled by the tides. Our hypothesis went like this: When female crabs were ready to release their larvae, they climbed up onto the nearest object, which was another crab, eventually accumulating into a large pile, up to a meter high; Upon some tide-related cue, female crabs began releasing larvae from their location high above the silty bottom layer, where the larvae could more easily escape; and millions of larvae hatching during a small window of time and space would overwhelm any larval predators and have a better chance of survival.

The “larval launch pad” hypothesis seemed to fit all the observed data, and later that year I presented it at a conference in Amsterdam, where it generated lots of discussion among my fellow carcinologists, i.e. crab scientists (whom, as we know, are some of the brightest minds in science!)3. But we needed a way to test it, and to answer specific questions that would support or refute it. Did mound formation coincide with high spring tides? Did crabs hatch larvae from the mounds? And was there a detectable tidal signal at the location and depth where the aggregation occurred?

All of our previous observations had been haphazard. In some years we saw the beginning of aggregation, in others, the middle or end, and in some years we didn’t see it at all. We needed to make observations over the entire period of mound formation, from early April to late May. How was I going to accomplish that? Leasing either the Delta or an ROV for that length of time would be too expensive.

A Sledding We Shall Go

What I needed was a cheap, simple alternative for finding and observing crab mounds on the seafloor. A camera sled. Most of the ones I had seen were huge beasts with complicated cameras and electronics on them, all of which would be too expensive for my budget, which was basically nonexistent. But down in Seattle, NOAA scientist Dr. Craig Rose was building small, self-contained camera systems to study how fish behaved in trawl nets. I soon arranged to borrow a camera and lighting system from him. Now all I needed was a platform that could be towed along the seafloor, on which to put the camera system.

Over the next three years, I designed and built four different camera sleds. Each one consisted of an aluminum frame with skis on the bottom and crossbars for bracing, and a tray to support the camera equipment. I even learned how to use a CAD drawing program so I could design and modify them. And each one was bigger than the previous one.

The first was only 3 feet long, and could be towed from a small boat. I called it the Benthic Resource Assessment Device, Model 1, i.e. the BRAD-1 (Ingenious, I know). But it was too light and would not stay on the bottom, and we almost lost it when it became entangled with a derelict crab pot. The next model (BRAD-2) was five feet long, and paid for by the NOAA Auke Bay Lab in Juneau, who wanted it for their research. The following year, I built another (BRAD-3) for Auke Bay, and a fourth (BRAD-4) for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), who allowed me use of their 100-foot research vessel, the Resolution, to test out the new sleds. Each of those sleds improved on the previous one, and each year we learned more about how to operate them and made a few observations of our crabs. But I didn’t own any of them.

Twin Peaks

Finally in 1999, I got funding to build my own sled (the BRAD-5) that would incorporate all the modifications of previous sleds, and to purchase the camera equipment that would go on it. It was eight feet long and built like a tank so it would go up and over any crab pots. That year, I chartered the 92-foot crabber Big Valley and also leased another Phantom ROV from Mark Blakeslee. I also arranged for the NOAA research vessel Miller Freeman to drop a large current meter in the middle of Chiniak Bay in March and retrieve it in October.

After a week of searching with the sled, we located the crab aggregation. The following week, we put down the ROV and flew it slowly around. With a small sector-scanning sonar we could see the crab aggregation from 50-100 yards away, then fly the ROV over to it. At one point we saw a large aggregation with two separate towers at each end, which we called Twin Peaks. As we watched, one of the towers became unstable and fell over.

We also collected some female crabs by tying a small net beneath the ROV. Like a crazy video game, Mark flew the ROV directly into a mound, scooping up a few crabs and scattering the rest all over. It was hella fun! The crabs were taken back to the lab and placed in individual aquaria. After a few days, larvae began hatching in bits and spurts, for a few hours after dark each evening. Each crab needed 6 or 7 days to hatch all her larvae, which we counted every morning. First only a few, then a hundred, then a thousand, ten thousand; some crabs released over a hundred thousand larvae in one night. By late May the crabs in the lab had finished hatching, and the aggregation in Chiniak Bay had started to disperse.

Putting the puzzle together

After retrieving the current meter data In October, I had all the pieces I needed to put the puzzle together. And the picture it made was finally complete. Crabs that had been brought into the lab had hatched their larvae within a two-week period in early May. And though mound formation had lasted about 6 weeks, longer than I expected, the peak period coincided with larval hatching in the lab. But the current meter data was the real kicker.

In March and early April, currents on the bottom of Chiniak Bay flowed in with the flood tide, and out with the ebb, but a little further each time, for a net flow of 1 inch per hour to the southeast, away from shore (negative, in the figure below). But then in late April it changed dramatically. During the spring tide in April, the net flow changed direction to the northwest for 3-4 days, i.e. towards shore (positive direction). After a few days, the normal pattern reasserted itself, but then during the spring tide in May, currents reversed again. This second period of current reversal was longer and stronger than the first and coincided exactly with the mid-point of both mound formation and hatching of larval crabs.

That was the answer I had been looking for. Female crabs started forming mounds in April and released their larvae during the spring tide in May, cueing their behavior to the tides. Larvae released during the period of current reversal would be carried toward shore, where they could settle in shallow water where juvenile crabs were most abundant. This was an evolutionary adaptation that kept the larvae from being washed out to sea, where they would die.

By now, I was convinced that the “Larval Launch Pad” hypothesis was basically correct. But there was one nagging detail I had not addressed; a Canadian scientist had shown that Snow Crabs hatched their larvae when placed into water containing phytoplankton. He believed that plankton falling to the ocean floor was a signal to the crabs that food was abundant and it was time to hatch. But when I examined his data closely, I realized that his crabs had hatched larvae during the spring tide, just like mine. Their biological clock was still ticking away in the lab, and they instinctively knew when the tides would change, and hatched accordingly.

However, to cover my bases, I conducted another experiment the following year, by placing two dozen female Tanner Crabs into individual aquaria. Half of them received flowing raw seawater (with plankton) directly from the ocean. The other twelve received filtered seawater from which all plankton had been removed. For a month, we collected and counted crab larvae daily, until all the crab larvae had hatched. The result showed that there was no difference in hatch timing between the two groups; the presence of plankton in the water made no difference to the crabs. For me, that was the clincher.

The mystery of Kani-Yama was finally solved.

The next two years were spent assembling and error-checking all the data before publishing my final paper on the subject in 2003 in which I laid out three years of sled and ROV observations, larval hatching, and current meter data4. By then, my interest in the project was flagging, even though I still had many unanswered questions and hypotheses. Could we monitor crab aggregations with some other technology like sonar, or laser scanning? Could we find other aggregations of female Tanner Crabs? Could we track larvae to determine if they were swept towards shore or out to sea? But those questions did not have the urgency, or the mystery, or the excitement attached to them as did the discovery of crab aggregations. And I had lost my passion for the subject.

It was time to move on to some other project, one that would tweak my scientific curiosity, engage my intellectual neurons, and subsume me in obsessive pursuit of scientific knowledge for its own sake. But what would it be?

The answer was another kind of mountain in the sea.

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After discovering an orgy of 100,000 crabs with a submarine, I spent the next five years trying to understand what it was about, with little success. It took another five years of research with remotely operated vehicles and camera sleds to elucidate it. The answer required matching up underwater observations, tidal current data, and larval hatching studies to piece together a complex puzzle that told an evolutionary story about survival of crab populations. I called it the Larval Launch Pad hypothesis. PS, check out the video of a collapsing mound of crabs.

No longer the slave of ambition, I laugh at the world and its shams
As I think of my happy condition, Surrounded by acres of clams

After oysters, clams are one of the most popular shellfish consumed around the world. On the east coast of the United States, three types of clams are most common. These are the Northern Quahog (pronounced “Ko-hog”) or hard clam, the Ocean Quahog, and the Surf Clam.

Clams Got Longevity

Like oysters, mussels, and scallops, clams are also bivalves, called so because they have two shells. Clams release their gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water, where they fuse into a zygote and develop into free-swimming larvae that filter feed on algae and diatoms. After settling to the seafloor, they dig into the sediment and feed via a siphon. Fresh water and plankton are brought in through the siphon to the gills where they are filtered out and passed to the mouth.

The table below compares the habitats and fisheries for three eastern US clam species. Northern Quahogs Mercenaria mercenaria live in shallow coastal environments, where many are cultivated, and grow to 4 inches. Small clams are known as littleneck or cherrystone clams. Cultivation is environmentally friendly because they remove plankton and nutrients from the water and do not require added feeds. About five million pounds are harvested annually, worth about $46 Million.

The Ocean Quahog Arctica islandica, and the Surf Clam Spisula solidissima both live on the continental shelf in waters hundreds of feet deep. Harvesting requires digging up the sediment. In shallow water, this can be done with an escalator dredge. In deep water, a clam dredge is used that pumps water down to the seafloor and blasts the clams up into a bag made of steel links. Both of these gears disturb sediments and organisms living on and in the sediment. Ocean Quahogs and Surf Clams are managed using Individual Transferable Quotas. Landings in 2023 were 30 and 41 million pounds, worth $26 million and $41 million, respectively.

Ocean Quahogs are some of the oldest animals on earth, living in excess of 200 years of age, so fishing them is somewhat like mining of non-renewable resources. Their populations may be declining as a result. Clams lay down growth rings in their shells like tree rings. Some scientists have determined historic ocean temperatures by counting clam rings that overlap back to 1000 years. They learned that ocean temperature changes preceded atmospheric changes until the industrial revolution, when that pattern reversed.

The Softshell Clam Mya arenaria can be found on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. On the Pacific Coast, the native Littleneck Clam Leukoma staminea is common, but in many places has been replaced by the Manilla Clam Ruditapes philippinarum, which was introduced for cultivation. The Butter Clam Saxidomus gigantea is also popular with recreational diggers, but highly likely to harbor PSP toxins, often called saxitoxins, after this clam. Geoduck clams (pronounced “gooey-duck”) Panope generosa may be the size of a human hand and have necks that stretch up to three feet. These are now being cultivated in Washington.

Recreational clamming is very popular in many locations. On the US east coast, littlenecks are dug in shallow water using clam rakes. New England clam bakes are special events where a hole is dug in the beach, and clams are laid over hot coals and covered with seaweed for several hours to steam, before being dug out and eaten. Digging for Razor Clams Siliqua patula is a popular sport on the ocean beaches of Washington and Oregon. At low tide, hundreds of people will dig for clams using long bladed shovels or “clam tubes”.

Clams Got Problems

Clams may harbor microbes that are harmful to humans. Two of these are Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and V. vulnificus. For this reason, eating undercooked or raw shellfish can cause illness. Clams may also be subject to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) as a result of ingesting Harmful Algal Blooms or HABs (See Sustainable Seafood #26). Razor clam digging is often curtailed by the presence of PSP. One type of diatom causes Domoic Acid poisoning which can cause gastric distress and neurological problems.

Beaches that have been identified as contaminated or subject to PSP may be identified with a sign or “Clam Warning” notifying diggers to avoid it. PSP is a major problem in the Pacific Northwest, around Puget Sound. Before being sold, commercially harvested shellfish such as clams and mussels must be tested for the presence of PSP by state health officials. Thus, any clams you may see in stores should be safe to eat. Digging your own may be a problem, though. I lived in Washington State for six years and never dug clams because of the presence of PSP.

The USFDA also occasionally issues warnings about processed clams that have been found to be contaminated. In 2023, the FDA issued an advisory about Bumble Bee brand canned clams, that were recalled for the presence of high levels of PFAs, above 20 ppm. Chopped Clams from China have also been flagged for having PFA levels >20 ppm. In addition, certain oysters from MA, CT, TX, Korea, Canada, BC, and Mexico have occasionally been flagged or identified as potentially hazardous to human health.

Clam shells consist of calcium carbonate, made from elements absorbed from seawater. Ocean acidification can affect this process by making less carbonate available, and the low pH of acidified seawater can cause shells to dissolve, especially during the larval stages.

Clams Got Flavor

Clams are usually sold whole in the shell, but may be sold as canned meats, or processed into chowder and soup. If buying whole clams, ensure that the shells are closed; open shells indicate that the clam is dead, and will have bacteria growing on it. Restaurants often serve clam fritters fried in batter. Clams are common ingredients in pasta and often included in bouillabaisses still in the shell. You can also buy bottled clam juice (the liquid that remains after steaming clams), for use in making clam chowder or flavoring other dishes.

Nutritionally, clams are extremely healthy. Compared to other protein sources, clams have moderate to high levels of protein, high levels of sodium (from being cooked in saltwater), and high levels of potassium. They have extremely low levels of total and saturated fat as well as low levels of cholesterol and Omega-3 fatty acids.

Clam chowder is one of those foods about which everybody has an opinion. Recipes are handed down through generations, and which part of the country makes the best chowder is a good way to start an argument virtually anywhere. I would be remiss in not providing a recipe for clam chowder, but there are so many out there to choose from, mine would not be unique. So I’ll send you to another substack with a generic recipe for basic soup or chowder: No, I can’t give you the Recipe.

Clams got Culture

Clams are important in human culture. Clams were important to the natives of the Pacific Northwest for multiple reasons. First, the clam features prominently in the origin story of the Haida people. After creating the world, Raven the trickster found a giant clam on the beach that had miniature animals hiding in it; he coaxed them out with his persuasive voice and they became the first men. Then, he found a chiton with tiny animals in it that, when coaxed out, became the first women. Other variations of the story allude to sexual commingling between clams and chitons and their resemblance to human anatomy, but we won’t go there.

Clams were also an important food source for natives of the Salish Sea area (Puget Sound and it’s northern Canadian branches) and clam shells are prominent in ancient kitchen middens. As far back as 2000 years ago, they farmed clams in terraces that they built along the shoreline, some of which are still in evidence.

Several English idioms refer to clams as well. The phrase “as happy as a clam at high water” has been in use since the early 1800’s. It refers to feeling safe and secure, because clams are only safe from predators, such as seagulls, when they are completely underwater. Clams close their shells tightly when threatened. Thus the phrase “Clam up” means to close your mouth and refuse to speak, or to be silent.

Ivar’s Acres of Clams is a famous waterfront restaurant in Seattle, Washington. Ivar Haglund was a folk singer and raconteur who opened the first aquarium on the waterfront in 1938. Finding his visitors hungry, he later opened a small restaurant featuring clam chowder and fish and chips and decorated it with cast-off fishing gear. Eventually he closed the aquarium and enlarged his restaurant business, expanding to multiple locations that featured seafoods local to Washington and Puget Sound. Ivar sponsored clam-eating contests and other public events that endeared him to Washingtonians. At one point he printed and sold Clam Stamps, which were eventually confiscated by the U.S. Post Office. The poem at the top of this article is from a folk song that Ivar appropriated for his theme song. You can listen to a version of it here along with some animated clams. Officially known as “The Old Settler”, the song ends thus:

Surrounded by acres of clams, Surrounded by acres of clams;
I think of my pleasant condition, Surrounded by acres of clams.

May you always be Surrounded by Acres of Clams.

PS - If you listen to the Podcast version of this post, you’ll hear me singing the song.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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I am 600 feet underwater lying on my stomach inside a steel cylinder not much bigger than a fuel oil tank. Looking out through a 6-inch porthole, I can only see a few feet through the murky water. As we creep along the seafloor, swirls of silt pass by like fog on a winter morning. Out of the silty, murky mist a crab appears. She stands motionless, oblivious of the hulking yellow submarine and its bright lights. We pass another crab, then another, and soon groups of five or ten appear in our dim headlights. Suddenly, we are looking at a wall of crabs, hundreds of them, as tall as the sub.

“Stop!” I say, “What the f**k is going on here?” What are they doing? I wonder. It is the most amazing sight I have ever seen. And I am the first person to ever see it. How did I get here?

In Flagrante Delicto, Crab Style

After spending ten summers studying king crabs in the Bering Sea, I had been struggling to find my scientific feet. Counting crabs to estimate quotas for the fishing fleet had become cookbook, and I needed a more challenging project that would give me publishable data. I had finally found it.

Snow crabs Chionoecetes opilio, which I wrote about in a previous post, are one of the largest and most valuable fisheries in Alaska. Canadian scientists had determined that the size of their claws, after undergoing terminal molt, was the best determinant of sexual maturity because only the large-clawed crabs could mate. But as yet, it had not been tested in the field. Could I do that?

All we needed to do was to capture crabs that were in the act of mating, and measure them. What size would they be? Would they all have large claws? It would be difficult to study snow crabs in Alaska, because it would require a month of expensive ship time in the Bering Sea. But we could test it with Tanner crabs Chionoecetes bairdi, which are very similar to snow crabs, and were abundant around Kodiak, Alaska, where I lived.

Over the next year, I captured 100 pairs of mating Tanner crabs by scuba diving around Kodiak with my colleague Eric Monk. But all the females we captured were immature “primiparous” crabs undergoing their maturity molt, and breeding for the first time; none of them were mature, oldshell multiparous females breeding for their second or third time. And all their partners were small male crabs, below the minimum size limit for the fishery. Where were all the larger male crabs, and the older, multiparous females? They had to be in deeper water than we could reach by scuba diving. How could we capture them? My first thought was to place some gillnets out in deeper water, but that was prohibited because they might entangle marine mammals.

Learning by Submersion

The only solution was to use a submarine. Yeah, it sounded crazy to me too, but a branch of NOAA called the National Undersea Research Program (NURP) had provided funds for other scientists to use one, so why not me? But before I could write a proposal, I needed to know more about how the sub worked, and what it could do.

In March of 1990, I visited an industrial garage in Torrance, CA, home to Delta Oceanographics, owners of the yellow submarine called the Delta. It had been built by Doug Privett, and Dr. Richard Slater was part owner and principal pilot. I spent an hour climbing in and out of the Delta and learning about its operations. The sub had one propeller operated by a golf-cart motor, and powered by four 12-V batteries in the keel. It also had a three-foot long manipulator that opened and closed like salad tongs. But could it catch crabs? I tried using it to pick up blocks of wood and decided it needed more fingers. Doug gave me the measurements and specs. Back in Kodiak, I gave the specs to machinist Bill Nippes, who designed and built a 3-fingered extension for the Delta’s manipulator, that we callled the “Crabulator”.

After submitting my grant proposal in September of 1990, I waited on pins and needles for three months. While waiting, we developed a device for returning captured crabs to the surface by strapping two milk crates together, and covering the opening with plastic “Cod fingers” that were used to prevent fish from escaping a trap. In January 1991 I received a letter (remember them?) telling me that I had been awarded about $200,000 for the project, which would cover two weeks of sub time. I was incredulous and ecstatic.

On a Saturday in April, 1991, the support ship Pirateer tied up at the Coast Guard pier with a little yellow submarine, the Delta, on its deck. It was about the most exciting thing to happen in Kodiak all winter (which says a lot about social life on an Alaskan island). We tied our crab baskets to a pulley system operated from inside the sub so we could raise and lower it. My crew consisted of NMFS biologist Jan Haaga, and Bill Donaldson, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).

In A Steel Coffin, Underwater

Many people would think twice before locking themselves into a steel coffin and dropping it 500 feet underwater where they could not escape. But it was a blast.

Every day, we motored out into Chiniak Bay and dove in the Delta to depths of almost 600 feet. To launch the Delta, a crane on the ship’s deck lifted the sub and set it into the water next to the ship, where it floated. I climbed over the rail and into the hatch, then lay prone on the floor. The pilot sat on a stool that poked up between my legs, with his head in the “tower” that protruded above the hull. Then the pilot closed and sealed the hatch, the deck crew disconnected the sub, and we motored away from the ship. Rich opened the valves on top of the front and rear ballast tanks, and air bubbled out the top as water flowed into an opening in the bottom of the tanks. Viewed from the ship, Delta just disappeared into a cloud of bubbles as it sank beneath the ocean surface.

Delta fell through the water at the rate of about 100 feet per minute, so that descending to the bottom at 600 feet took only about five minutes. Though we rocked with the waves while on the surface, as soon as we dropped 20 to 30 feet beneath the waves, all sense of motion ceased. The blue-green water became darker, and at 100 feet, there was no visible light from the surface. Out in the open ocean, light penetrates to 600 feet, but here in the plankton-rich coastal waters, all light was extinguished at shallower depths. As we drifted slowly down, I peered into the gloom through the porthole, searching for some sign of the bottom. In those few minutes we could have been drifting through deepest, darkest, outer space.

Descending from the surface was exciting, but even more exciting was approaching the bottom. We never knew exactly where we would land, or what the bottom would be like. The water became brighter as our lights were reflected by the mud below. Feeling no motion, the bottom appeared to “come up” towards us. Rich “turned on the brakes” by blasting a short spurt of air into the ballast tanks. As we settled gently to the bottom, the pressure wave below us created a storm cloud of silt that rose up and swirled all around us. While we waited for the cloud to dissipate, Rich called up to the surface on the underwater radio (the UQC), to say all was well.

Inside Delta were two scuba tanks containing oxygen for refreshing our air supply. Air inside the Delta was at surface pressure, one atmosphere or 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). As we sank, the water pressure outside the hull increased by one atmosphere every 10 meters, or 33 feet. At a depth of 600 feet (almost 200 meters) the outside pressure was almost 20 atmospheres, or about 300 psi. That pressure would kill a human. But inside Delta, we were still breathing air that was at surface pressure. The strength of the hull was the only thing keeping Delta from collapsing under the pressure of the ocean.

As we breathed air, our bodies absorbed oxygen and produced carbon dioxide, which could become poisonous if it exceeded 3% of the atmosphere inside the sub. To prevent that unfortunate outcome, a fan circulated air through a scrubber full of potassium chloride granules that absorbed the CO₂. As the oxygen levels were reduced by our breathing, the air pressure shown on a gauge inside the sub would slowly fall. Every few minutes, Rich opened one of the oxygen cylinders until the pressure came back up to 100%. By that simple system, we could maintain our air as fresh as it was at the surface.

While on the bottom, the surface crew fixed our position. GPS doesn’t work underwater, so we used an underwater tracking system (Trackpoint). A transponder suspended beneath the ship sent a signal to a receiver on the Delta that responded with its own ping. The time interval between ping and response was used to determine the distance to the Delta, and the bearing (angle) was determined by triangulating between two receivers separated on the transponder by only a few millimeters. A computer then integrated this information with the surface GPS to calculate the sub’s position. Each time we took a position on the Delta, I wrote it down in a notebook and plotted it on a large chart in the wheelhouse. Even though a computer was recording the positions, this was good policy, because many of the data files were lost to computer crashes.

In the bow of the Delta were twelve 6-inch diameter portholes. The front two looked through a ballast tank that was like a large fish tank. Forward visibility wasn’t very good, especially in the murky waters of Chiniak Bay, but visibility downward and to the sides was excellent. As Delta slid along the muddy seafloor, my face was only about a foot off the bottom, so I had a clear view of about one square meter of bottom.

For most of the dive, I lay on my stomach, peering into the murky gloom, and recorded notes about what I saw. When I spotted a crab, Rich chased after them with the sub. I reached out with the crabulator, forced it down over the crab and closed the fingers. It took several tries to get one into the basket, but we eventually got the hang of it, and made bets about who could catch the most crabs in one dive (Bill, 45). After two hours of this we were tired, and our bladders were also ready for a break, so we finished the dive and ascended.

Before ascending, we alerted the Pirateer so it could get out of the way. The last thing we wanted was to pop up underneath the steel hull of our support ship. Not only would we learn what it felt like to be the clapper inside a church bell, but it could damage the sub and sink it. In order to ascend, Rich opened a valve and squirted some compressed air into the front and rear ballast tanks. It didn’t take much to lift Delta off the bottom. As we rose through the water and the pressure outside decreased, the air inside the tanks expanded, and our ascent rate increased.

A few minutes later, we reached the surface, and bobbed about while the ship maneuvered over to where we were floating. Then Rich motored us over to the side of the ship, and we heard a double clank as the crew clipped on our lift hooks. A short jerk lifted us up out of the water, and we rested against the ship. As Rich opened the hatch, I heard a soft whoosh, and my ears popped as the slight pressure differential between the inside and outside air was equalized. Rich climbed out first, and I after him. In a few minutes, another diver and fresh pilot were inside the Delta, and the launch sequence was repeated. In this manner we could easily achieve four 2-hour dives in a 10-12 hour workday.

After four days of searching for crabs, we still had not found any mating pairs. But as the Delta explored the seafloor, we began to see more female crabs. Large groups of them, in tens, twenties, and more. Visibility was still poor, but began to clear up towards the end of the week.

The Eureka Moment

On the 19^th of April, 1991, I dove to the bottom of Chiniak Bay during a period of extremely high tides. Sitting on the bottom, I watched the silt particles streaming by the sub at ¼ to ½ of a knot. That day, the visibility was extremely good, as if the silt had all been washed away by the tides. As we motored along the bottom, I saw a large group of crabs come slowly into view. As far as I could see we were surrounded by crabs. They covered the bottom in several layers of crabs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all around the sub. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen, but the immensity of the discovery did not dawn on me all at once. It just seemed odd.

In science fiction movies, whenever the scientist makes an important discovery, he shouts aloud “Eureka, I have discovered it!” or some such nonsense. The impression given is that the scientist has spent years laboring in his laboratory, and finally the discovery is made suddenly, and its importance recognized instantly. But the truth is that most scientists are a little more cautious in their pronouncements, and it usually takes some time to recognize the importance of a new discovery. Expressing my scientific caution, I didn’t jump to conclusions.

“Wow, look at that” I said. “There are a lot of crabs here. I wonder what they are doing”. In that succinct statement, I summed up the awe of the situation, and the question that would hound me for the next decade. At the end of the dive, I could not contain myself in describing the scene to Jan and Bill. But on the next few dives, they saw it for themselves.

The high tides and currents continued to bring us improved visibility conditions. What I saw just about made my eyes pop out. The female crabs had coalesced from an amorphous mob of layered crabs into discrete piles of crab. Each pile was about three feet across and similar in height. We took photos and video of every pile that we could locate, and estimated the numbers of crab by counting the layers, the numbers of crab in each layer, and presuming that those numbers represented the sides of a tetrahedral shape, like a pyramid. Using that method we estimated that the average mound contained over 400 female crabs! And there were many mounds in a small area.

Using the crabulator and basket system, we captured crabs from the piles, and discovered that every such crab was a female with pre-hatching eggs. The few males we saw were usually adjacent to the piles, but never in them. Some of those males were grasping females in a premating embrace, exactly what we had been looking for. To our surprise and pleasure, we found we could capture them fairly easily with the crabulator, by simply grabbing the larger male crab, which kept a firm grip on his mate as we placed them both into the basket.

A Tailgate Party, and Mountains in the Mist

Over the next week, we slowly developed a better understanding of the size of the crab aggregation. The core area was about 200 meters long and 100 meters across, equivalent to 2 hectares, a little larger than a football stadium. In the core region were numerous piles of females, spaced at intervals of only a few meters. From the Delta, we could often see three or more mounds of crab around us. Outside the core area, in the “parking lot”, so to speak, were many single male crabs, like a tailgate party. The male crabs scurrying around on the bottom stirred up clouds of silt that rose up a few feet that obscured my view from the Delta. But the video camera on the Delta recorded this view of crab-laden mountain tops rising above the silty cloud layer, like karst formations rising up from the fog in the bottom of a Chinese river valley.

On one transect of 60 meters length I counted 20 mounds of crabs with 50 to 500 crabs each, at intervals of 3 meters (about 10 feet) between mound centers. The distance between the edges of the mounds was only a few feet. If it were possible to walk underwater, I could step across the entire aggregation of crabs, from mound to mound, without ever touching the bottom.

Using our positions, estimates of numbers of crabs in each mound, and counts of solitary crabs on the sediment, I calculated the total number of crabs within the 2 ha area. The estimate was astounding; over 100,000 female crabs, and upwards of 10,000 male crabs. All in an area the size of a Walmart parking lot.

We spent many dives just trying to figure out what the crabs were doing. We sat on the bottom and watched for hours during daytime, nighttime, high tide and low-tide. The crabs sat and looked back at us, hardly moving. We captured them and brought them to the surface. When we put them in buckets we saw a few larvae swimming around, but thought that we had just shaken them loose while being captured and brought up to the surface (a serious missed cue, as it later turned out). After about a week of this, we hadn’t learned much, and the visibility became much worse.

What were the crabs doing? Nothing, it seemed like. Then why were they aggregated into mounds? And why HERE, and why NOW? Were they protecting themselves from predators? Were they functioning as pheromone towers, creating an odor trail to attract males for mating?

As fascinating as it was, the aggregation was not what we came here to study. With only a week left to finish our project, we went back to the business of capturing crab pairs for measurement. By the end of the week we had met our goal of capturing 50 pairs of crabs. With one day left to spare, we ventured back out for one last look.

On the last day of our work with the Delta, I dove to the bottom of the bay in water with fairly good visibility, as the spring tides were increasing again. Sitting on the bottom, watching a mound of crabs, I realized that this was the strangest natural phenomenon I had ever witnessed. That we ever found the aggregation was an incredible stroke of luck. It was a melding of preparation, diligence, and systematic work, with a large dose of serendipity. I realized that I had better take a good hard look, because I might never see it again in my life. That thought couldn’t have been more prophetic.

Over the next five years, the crabs eluded every attempt to catch them in action again, and another decade was required to unravel the mystery of crab mountains.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

This issue of Ecologist at Large is available to all readers. However, if you would like to support my work with a one-off contribution, click “Buy me a coffee” below.

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“Start the watch” said Dr. Nishitani as she injected the mouse with the clear fluid. Then she put the animal back gently back into its container. We all watched expectantly. Within a minute the mouse began to shake, and within another minute it began to wobble back and forth. Soon it fell over onto its side and began to convulse violently. After a minute of this, it stopped moving, then drew its last gasping breath. “Mark time”, she said. Five and a half minutes. She scribbled some notes, punched a few numbers into a calculator, then consulted a table.

“Over 10,000 Mouse Units,” she said, “easily enough to kill a human”.

An Alphabet Soup of Shellfish Poisoning: PSP, ASP, and DSP

That simple laboratory experiment that I observed as a graduate student was a visceral and disgusting demonstration of the strength of shellfish toxins. After blending a measured amount of clam tissue and extracting the toxin, injecting it into the mouse gave a highly accurate measure of its concentration. A Mouse Unit is defined as the amount of toxin required to kill a 20-gram mouse in a given amount of time. As little as 0.1 microgram of the toxin was enough. If consumed as part of a meal, one milligram (1000 micrograms) would kill a human.

Anyone who consumes shellfish should know about shellfish poisoning because it can cause sickness and death. It is caused by toxins produced by microscopic algae that are consumed and concentrated by shellfish (mostly bivalves: clams, oysters, and mussels).

Often referred to as Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, or PSP, the symptoms can appear within minutes after consumption. First a tingling sensation around the lips, then numbness in the face and throat. This can spread to the limbs, then lead to general paralysis and potentially death by respiratory failure. If diagnosed quickly, severely affected people can be treated by assisted ventilation, and most cases start to recover within 12 hours. In addition to paralysis, toxins such as domoic acid may cause neurologic symptoms (Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning, or ASP) or gastrointestinal distress (Diarrhetic poisoning, DSP).

The mouse test described above is used around the world and has become standardized by the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Usually, it requires dozens of mice to calibrate and verify the test, and yes, it is cruel, expensive, and somewhat subjective (was that actually the last breath?). But it has proven itself to be one of the most reliable tests of toxicity.

The problem with testing for PSP is that it may be caused by multiple toxins, and every event involves a different mixture of them. Saxitoxin is the most well-known agent, named after the Butter Clam, Saxidomus giganteus, which often carries the highest loads of toxin. Saxitoxin and its relatives are neurotoxins that cause paralysis by binding to sodium channels on cells, inhibiting the transfer of Na+ across the membrane, and thus blocking the action of both nerve and muscle cells.

Of the many types of shellfish toxin, Saxitoxin is the only one for which chemical tests (enzyme linked (ELISA) or radio-immuno assays) have been developed. But testing just for its presence doesn’t eliminate the possibility of other toxins being present.

From Algae to Bivalve to You

PSP toxins are produced by algae during events called Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). These are caused when certain types of microscopic single-celled algae, diatoms or dinoflagellates, grow exponentially and cause problems for humans or wildlife. In marine waters, toxins are produced by the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis and the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia. PSP is also caused by diatoms in the genera Alexandrium and Gymnodinium. Amnesic shellfish poisoning is caused by the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia. In freshwater, toxins are often produced by cyanobacteria (“blue-green algae”, which I wrote about previously).

When bivalves consume the algae by filter-feeding, the toxins are concentrated in the gills and viscera. We ingest them when we eat the whole body of smaller shellfish. In larger clams that are used for chowder, such as surf clams or geoducks, the gills and viscera should be discarded. Scallops accumulate PSP toxins in their gills and mantle, which are consumed in Europe, but not in the United States. Butter Clams concentrate the toxins at the tips of the siphon (the “neck”). This may be a response to predation by sea otters, which have been known to just nip off the necks of clams rather than dig them up. PSP toxins can become airborne when waves break on the beach, aerosolizing the algae, which can cause severe respiratory irritation.

ASP often occurs in razor clams as well as Dungeness Crabs that eat the clams. The toxin accumulates in the yellow hepatopancreas of the crab (the so-called “crab-butter), which can be toxic, while the meat may still be safe to eat.

The HABs and HAB-nots

HABs occur in fresh or marine bodies of water when nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), temperature, and currents combine to form the optimal conditions for algal growth. Often, such blooms appear as discolored water that may be red, green, or bluish. HABs are mistakenly called “red tides” because they are not always red and may not even be visible. And just because it’s red doesn’t mean it’s toxic.

Agricultural runoff and effluent from municipal waste treatment systems may contribute to these conditions, which are common where drainage is poor, such as in coastal lagoons. HABs are common in man-made “Dead-end” canals created for waterside housing developments where natural vegetation has been replaced with bulkheads or riprap. Such hard barriers prevent natural ecological processes at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial habitats which could absorb or reduce some of the nutrients. HABs are common in the Gulf of Mexico, especially the coasts of Florida and Texas.

Toxins produced by microalgae can be deadly to fish, marine mammals, humans, and their pets. In Australia, algal blooms have caused the deaths of fish and dolphins. An algal bloom off the coast of Southern California in March of 2025 produced domoic acid, sickening hundreds of seals and sea lions that washed up on beaches. A bloom in Florida lasted from 1987 to 1988, killing 149 manatees, and 740 bottlenose dolphins that died after eating contaminated fish. In 2015, a large bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia covered most of the Northeast Pacific, from California to the Aleutian Islands, and was responsible for the deaths of multiple whales, birds, and fish in Alaska.

HABs are not only a health hazard but can cause major economic losses as well. In Washington, digging for razor clams on the ocean beaches attracts thousands of diggers during low tide periods, and closing beaches due to the presence of PSP can cause a loss of $40 million in tourism income. In Lake Erie, HABs have caused water treatment plants to be shut down. In Texas, HABs have caused the loss of over $10 million in oyster harvests.

Fortunately, HABs can be forecast by NOAA and many state agencies using information from satellite imagery, data buoys, and field observations. Forecasters create public HAB Bulletins to alert the public to times and locations where HABs may occur.

A variety of environmental conditions and algal types contribute to HABs, so it’s hard to tell if they are increasing in frequency. But warming ocean temperatures will exacerbate the conditions that support HAB development, so it’s likely that they will become more frequent and intense in the future. Blooms of Sargassum in the Atlantic Ocean have intensified in the past decade, washing up on coastal beaches from Brazil to Florida, and causing billions of dollars in lost tourism income. These blooms have been connected to increased nutrients in the tropical ocean, some of which originate from the Amazon River due to deforestation (and which I wrote about in a previous article).

Put the Lime in the Coconut

As a graduate student in Washington State, I used to love collecting wild mussels and digging clams on the ocean beaches. But after seeing the mouse demonstration, I became much more careful about when and where I did that. Fortunately, all commercial bivalve operations are required to test their products for PSP before sale, and many popular recreational harvesting areas are also tested by State agencies. I learned to check with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to see which beaches were safe before I went out to collect bivalves.

Unfortunately, there is no way for the consumer to determine if any shellfish is toxic without actually testing it. Cooking does not destroy the toxin. Holding bivalves in clean seawater for several days may help clear out their guts, but this is not a reliable method. You can’t detect the presence of a HAB by looking at water, nor predict it by the presence of human development. HABs and PSP were common around Kodiak, Alaska, where I lived for many years, and some people died from eating contaminated shellfish even where the water was otherwise clean and uncontaminated. Conversely, plenty of people harvest clams from the Maryland outer coast without encountering PSP, despite the proximity to densely populated areas such as Ocean City.

The best way to avoid ingesting toxins is to buy shellfish from reliable sources, or if harvesting them recreationally, be aware of local forecasts and warnings for specific areas. Look out for signs that warn of beach closures. But don’t let fear of toxins prevent you from eating shellfish. Oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, and crabs are excellent food sources, with lots of valuable omega-3 fatty acids that contribute to a heart-healthy diet.

Strangely enough, one potentially effective cure for mild PSP poisoning, used in the Philippines, is a mixture of coconut milk and sugar. So maybe the old song was right.

You put the lime in the coconut, you drink them both together,
Put the lime in the cocount, then you’ll feel better.
Put the lime in the coconut, and drink them both up,
Put the lime in the coconut, and call me in the morning.

© Harry Nillson

Additional Sources

https://www.whoi.edu/science/B/redtide/illness/psp.html

https://www.noaa.gov/what-is-harmful-algal-bloom

https://www.epa.gov/habs/what-causes-habs

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