European green crabs caught by Heiltsuk guardians in Q’vúqvai (Gale Creek) on July 26.

Photo by Sonal Gupta/Canada’s National Observer

This story was originally published in

Canada’s National Observer

and appears here with permission and minor style edits.

One of Turza Humchitt’s earliest memories is of her grandmother’s table — where family sat on benches on either side and shared from a large pot that might hold soup, clams, cockles or Dungeness crab.

Fresh clams were steamed with rice, fried in the half-shell or eaten with broth sipped straight from the shell.

For Humchitt, a fellow member of Híɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation, they still taste like childhood.

“It reminds me of what’s always been there,” said Humchitt, who lives in Wágḷísḷa (Bella Bella), on “B.C.’s” central coast.

Now, that food is harder to find close to home.

Humchitt said her husband has had to travel farther in recent years to harvest clams — thanks to an invasion hastened by a disaster.

Diana Chan, natural resource manager with the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, holds clam shells at Q’vúqvai (Gale Creek).

Photo by Sonal Gupta

A decade after the tugboat

Nathan E. Stewart

ran aground and spilled diesel into the nation’s clam harvesting areas, Híɫzaqv guardians — trained Indigenous stewards who monitor the nation’s lands and waters — say the damage is still spreading.

In Q’vúqvai (Gale Creek) near Wágḷísḷa, guardians have found European green crab populations have

increased

dramatically

since the October 2016 spill.

European green crabs are native to Europe and North Africa, but have spread widely in “North America.”

Unlike native Dungeness crabs and the larger blue crabs commonly eaten on the “US” East Coast, green crabs are small and carry little meat.

They are edible, but often more practical for stocks, sauces, fertilizer or other products than as a crab people crack and eat at the table, said Carolyn Tepolt, an associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Tepolt said green crabs are unusually well-suited to spread and survive in new places because they tolerate a wide range of conditions, eat many different foods, and may be able to withstand some polluted environments.

“If you were going to design a great invasive species,” Tepolt said, “it would probably have a lot of the qualities the green crabs have.”

READ MORE:

Colonialism ‘an invasive species’: Indigenous communities replenish threatened Indigenous food systems

Crews are removing the invasive crabs as they eat young clams and show up in more parts of Híɫzaqv territory — threatening clam beds that have sustained Híɫzaqv food, culture and livelihoods.

Diana Chan, natural resource manager with the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, said the possibility that an oil spill could be followed years later by a green crab surge was not something the nation had initially been watching for.

When a spill happens, the response often focuses on containing and cleaning up the oil, Chan said.

“The long-term monitoring has really been lacking,” she said.

“Híɫzaqv was left to just do all of it on our own.”

Richard Reid, a veteran Guardian Watchmen supervisor and steward for the Heiltsuk Nation, carries a tote used to hold European green crabs after they are trapped in Q’vúqvai (Gale Creek).

Photo by Sonal Gupta

A surge in green crabs

Green crabs were present around Q’vúqvai before the spill, but in much smaller numbers.