Portunus is a genus of crabs which includes several important species for fisheries, such as the blue swimming crab and the Gazami crab. Other species, such as the three-spotted crab are caught as bycatch.
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the world's oceans, in freshwater, and on land, are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton, and have a single pair of pincers. They first appeared during the Jurassic Period.
Callinectes sapidus, the blue crab, Atlantic blue crab, or regionally as the Maryland blue crab, is a species of crab native to the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and introduced internationally.
Soft-shell crab is a culinary term for crabs that have recently molted their old exoskeleton and are still soft. Soft-shells are removed from the water as soon as they molt or, preferably, just before to prevent any hardening of their shell. Catching soft-shell crab is very time-sensitive and requires that any caught crabs be kept in climate-controlled areas immediately after catching until they molt, at which point they can be safely removed and sold.
Cancer pagurus, commonly known as the edible crab or brown crab, is a species of crab found in the North Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, and perhaps the Mediterranean Sea. It is a robust crab of a reddish-brown colour, having an oval carapace with a characteristic "pie crust" edge and black tips to the claws. A mature adult may have a carapace width up to 25 centimetres and weigh up to 3 kilograms. C. pagurus is a nocturnal predator, targeting a range of molluscs and crustaceans. It is the subject of the largest crab fishery in Western Europe, centred on the coasts of the British Isles, with more than 60,000 tonnes caught annually.
Carcinus maenas is a common littoral crab. It is known by different names around the world. In the British Isles, it is generally referred to as the shore crab, or green shore crab. In North America and South Africa, it bears the name European green crab.
Portunus pelagicus, also known as the flower crab, blue crab, blue swimmer crab, blue manna crab or sand crab is a species of large crab found in the Indo-Pacific, including off the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam; and in the intertidal estuaries around most of Australia and east to New Caledonia.
Portunidae is a family of crabs which contains the swimming crabs. Its members include many well-known shoreline crabs, such as the blue crab and velvet crab. Two genera in the family are contrastingly named Scylla and Charybdis; the former contains the economically important species black crab and Scylla paramamosain.
Crab meat or crab marrow is the meat found within a crab, or more specifically, the leg of a crab. It is used in many cuisines around the world, prized for its soft, delicate and sweet taste. Crab meat is low in fat and provides around 340 kilojoules (82 kcal) of food energy per 85-gram (3 oz) serving. Brown crab, blue crabs, blue swimming crabs, and red swimming crabs are among the most commercially available species of crabmeat globally.
Hematodinium perezi is a pathogenic dinoflagellate parasite that infects crustaceans, including the Blue Crab and Norway Lobster and has been observed to have a significant impact on crustacean fisheries. Infected crustaceans frequently show signs of weakness and lethargy, and often die due to stress-related handling from fishing as well as metabolic exhaustion due to reduced feeding. This parasite is known to be quite transmissible between various crustacean hosts.
Callinectes similis, sometimes called the lesser blue crab or dwarf crab, is a West Atlantic species of blue crab. It was described by Austin B. Williams in 1966.
Hematodinium is a genus of dinoflagellates. Species in this genus, such as Hematodinium perezi, the type species, are internal parasites of the hemolymph of crustaceans such as the Atlantic blue crab and Norway lobster. Species in the genus are economically damaging to commercial crab fisheries, including causing bitter crab disease in the large Tanner or snow crab fisheries of the Bering Sea.
Around 65 species of crab occur in the waters of the British Isles. All are marine, with the exception of the introduced Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis, which occurs in fresh and brackish water. They range in size from the deep-water species Paromola cuvieri, which can reach a claw span of 1.2 metres, to the pea crab, which is only 4 mm (0.16 in) wide and lives inside mussel shells.
Neohelice granulata is a species of crab in the family Varunidae, and the only species in the genus Neohelice. In 2009, it was estimated that N. granulata was the sixth most studied species of crab.
Declawing of crabs is the process whereby one or both claws of a crab are manually detached before the return of the live crab to the water, as practiced in the fishing industry worldwide. Crabs commonly have the ability to regenerate lost limbs after a period of time, and thus declawing is viewed as a potentially more sustainable method of fishing. Due to the time it takes for a crab to regrow lost limbs, however, whether or not the practice represents truly sustainable fishing is still a point of scientific inquiry, and the ethics of declawing are also subject to debates over pain in crustaceans.
Arthropods play many roles in human culture, the social behaviour and norms in human societies transmitted through social learning, including as food, in art, in stories, and in mythology and religion. Many of these aspects concern insects, which are important both economically and symbolically, from the work of honeybees to the scarabs of Ancient Egypt. Other arthropods with cultural significance include crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, and crayfish, which are popular subjects in art, especially still lifes, and arachnids such as spiders and scorpions, whose venom has medical applications. The crab and the scorpion are astrological signs of the zodiac.
Portunus segnis, the African blue swimming crab, is a species of crustacean, a swimming crab belonging to the family Portunidae. While native to the western Indian Ocean, it is also invasive in the Mediterranean. It is thought to have come through the Suez Canal from the Red Sea but it may have been transported by ships.
