The researcher has find a historic solution when North Carolina’s native blue crab population has been low since 2000. The researcher said that the pond-raised crabs look and taste just like their ocean-raised brethren. Dr. Dave Eggleston, director of NC State’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology (CMAST) and professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, exclaimed that this solution not only reduces pressure on existing crab populations, but also benefits farmers looking to diversify their crops: using irrigation ponds on farms to grow blue crabs.
Eggleston explained that they have started out by catching small crabs in the wild and stocking them into farm ponds loaded with bass and bluegill predators, and were still able to get 12 percent survival. He added that after few unsuccessful attempts they teamed with the University of Maryland’s Center of Marine Biotechnology who had the expertise to growth hatchery-reared blue crabs, and stocked these blue crabs in freshwater experimental aquaculture ponds at NC State’s Vernon James Research and Extension Center in Plymouth, N.C., where the crabs exhibited some of the highest growth rates on record.
Eggleston and his fellow researchers discovered that crabs can tolerate a salinity level of only .3 parts per thousand, which is about the same level found in coastal tap water. Eggleston and Ray Harris, NC State director of cooperative extension for Carteret County, had the opportunity for a large-scale test when they stocked a 10-acre lake with 40,000 hatchery-raised crabs, and a smaller pond with 4,000 crabs. It si found that the rate of growth for pond-raised crabs is alarmingly high.
With such high growth rate Eggleston expects that in a given year, a farm could produce two to three harvests, as crabs don’t do well in freshwater during the winter months. It is said that the research was funded by the N.C. Blue Crab Research Program that was established by the N.C. General Assembly and is administered by North Carolina Sea Grant.
