Italy's blue crab invasion outpaces burning, turned into canned crab meat for export
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In Italy's Po River Delta, there are more blue crabs (大西洋蓝蟹, Callinectes sapidus) than can be burned. Since 2024, the Italian government has funded fishermen in Polesine to catch and burn blue crabs, with the neighboring Sacca di Goro lagoon and Tuscany's Orbetello lagoon following suit. In two years, nearly 2.3 million kilograms (about 5 million pounds) were burned, yet the population has barely been suppressed—a single female crab can lay up to 8 million eggs per breeding season. Enrico Caterino, the government's special commissioner for the blue crab emergency, confirmed that the eradication program has been shelved. If they cannot be killed off, another path is being taken: catch them and sell them. Every blue crab caught so far in 2026 by the Polesine fishermen's cooperative consortium has been sold, with full-year revenue projected at 20 million euros (about 23 million US dollars), the bulk coming from crab sales, ultimately turned into cans of crab meat shipped overseas.
Behind this lies a grim ledger of disaster. The Polesine fishermen's cooperative consortium saw revenue plunge 75% in 2024 and 2025, down to just 15 million euros (about 17 million US dollars), with active members shrinking from 1,500 to 850. According to cooperative president Paolo Mancin, "We need to change strategy, to create opportunity from this disaster"—catching heavily and exporting these unwanted crabs in order to preserve the Manila clam and mussel, two species that once made the shallow lagoons of Veneto and Emilia-Romagna thrive for decades. Clams once accounted for 90% of fishermen's income; now they account for only 10%. The purchase price for blue crab is just 1.30 euros per kilogram, while clams can fetch 10 euros per kilogram. Crabs are holding livelihoods together, but income cannot return to the heyday of the shellfish industry.
Piero Genovesi, an invasive species expert at the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, explained that the Atlantic blue crab entered the Adriatic Sea at least as early as the 1940s via the ballast water of merchant ships. Numbers remained limited for a long time, with fishermen only catching them occasionally, until an outbreak began in 2023. Warming seawater favors reproduction, but the real trigger was most likely drought that lowered the Po River's water level, allowing seawater to seep into freshwater tributaries across the peninsula. The food-rich clam and mussel farms in the lagoons and delta became a larder for the blue crabs. They tear through fishing nets, devour farmed shellfish at an astonishing rate, and have squeezed out the habitat of the local specialty soft-shell green crab "moeche."
Biological control is likewise far from promising. This summer, the University of Bologna released 150,000 juvenile octopuses into the Adriatic Sea and also released video of adult octopuses devouring blue crabs, but most of the juveniles are expected to struggle to survive; octopuses prefer rocky reef environments rather than the sandy lagoons where blue crabs live. Genovesi's assessment: once a species with such strong reproductive capacity finds a suitable environment, natural predators may not be able to suppress it.
The way out ultimately falls to the processing stage. In the early morning of peak fishing season, fishermen unload boxes of live crabs from the backs of cars and trucks, 100 to 150 kilograms at a time, which are steamed, frozen, boxed and shipped to Sri Lanka. A joint venture between Sri Lankan seafood company Taprobane Seafoods and the Scardovari consortium handles the subsequent steps. Workers shell the crab meat by hand, with products covering canned crab meat, crab claw meat, crab meat-surimi blended foods and fried crab chips, most of which are exported overseas, with only a small amount sold back to Italy. Blue crab shells are hard, the meat is scant, and shelling is labor-intensive; European and American consumers are more accustomed to ordering a portion in a restaurant rather than buying it to shell at home—cans fill exactly this last step, with the factory completing shelling and cleaning so the product is ready to use straight from the can. Taprobane expects to expand its retail business on a large scale in Italy and Europe in the future.
The food service channel is also loosening up. On the Sacca di Goro lagoon, second-generation fisherman Federico Zago hauls in pots of crabs each day from his stilted fishing hut: "Since we have to coexist with these crabs, I hope they can become an opportunity." Stefania Marchesini, head chef at Yogi restaurant in Porto Tolle in the Po River Delta, worked as a professional fisherman for 11 years. Her family restaurant has launched an all-crab menu: fried crab balls, creamy crab meat with polenta, soft-shell crab and crab pieces in the shell. "At first customers were very skeptical, but after tasting, the reaction was completely positive—they want to try all our products," Marchesini said. High-end restaurants in Venice still generally avoid blue crab—labor-intensive to process, plus the reputation of "destroying the shellfish industry," and it will take time for perceptions to change. Crab pots are still set as usual, steamers are still heated as usual, and the blue crabs that could not be burned off in two years are drifting overseas one can at a time.
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