25 cents a pound fails to motivate Mainers to harvest green crabs for NC company
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Bangor Daily News] By Beth Brogan - August 18, 2014 -
FREEPORT, Maine, As researchers from Casco Bay to Frenchman Bay study the lifestyle and diet of invasive European green crabs in an effort to control the predators, a North Carolina company hopes to find Mainers willing to sell the creeping crustaceans to be processed into cat food.
Bay City Crab purchased two tractor-trailer loads — a total of 22,000 pounds — of crabs earlier this summer from Boothbay Harbor-area harvesters and processed them at their plant based in Aurora, North Carolina. The firm then shipped the crabmeat to a cat food company, plant manager Chrissy Fulcher said Friday.
But just as the state of Maine loosened regulations around selling green crabs, the men who were selling to Fulcher said they were done. The 25 cents a pound she was paying “just wasn’t worth it [to them],” Fulcher said. “[One harvester] said he wasn’t catching the numbers [to make it worthwhile].”
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