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Mitten Crabs, Pike Worries

Mitten Crab Digs In

Scientists are now certain that the Chinese mitten crab is widely distributed throughout the South Bay's numerous freshwater channels. So far, nothing suggests that the experience here will be any different than it was in Europe in the 1930s, when the same burrowing invader spread across the continent - damaging dikes and clogging dam spillways. During the height of a German government program aimed at eliminating the crab, workers hauled in more than 3 million crabs a year.

UC Berkeley's Kathleen Halat says the non-native crab's overwhelming success at colonizing the South Bay can be traced to its extremely high reproductive rate. At the time of fertilization, the female carries between 250,000 and a million eggs on the exterior of her body.

A plan to control the crabs' spread has yet to emerge. Although many people might delight in eating and selling the crab, officials fear that encouraging crab harvesting would lead to introductions into other estuarine systems. The crab's gonads sell for $16-18 per pound in Hong Kong, and its meat has been found in Bay Area Chinatowns. Though the crab is a secondary host to the health-threatening Oriental lung fluke in its native range, a recent South Bay study by Dr. Armand Kuris of UC Santa Barbara found no evidence of lung flukes in local crabs.

Contact: Kathleen Halat (510)642-6315

Pike Worries

Unable to complete environmental documents this fall to allow eradication of the exotic Northern pike from Davis Lake in the low Sierra, Cal Fish & Game is taking special steps to keep the voracious predator from spreading to the upper Feather River.

Patrols have been increased to augment an emergency regulation passed by the Fish and Game Commission that prohibits anglers from possessing pike.

A special Fish & Game World Wide Web page is devoted to warnings about the Davis Lake situation, showing drawings of a Northern pike and of the squawfish and alligator gar, fish with which the pike is often confused.

Fish & Game's Ron Decoto says the worry is the pike will make it to the Delta, where it would devour baby salmon. He says the decision has already been made to eradicate all life from Davis Lake but the department will have to wait until October 1996 to get the right temperatures for the toxin Rotenone.

Contact: Ron Decoto (916)596-3693

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