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Stalin's red legacy: crabs
By
Jeremy Bransten
 PRAGUE - Fifty years after his
death in 1953, the shadow of former Soviet dictator
Josef Stalin continues to haunt many corners of Europe -
often in the most unexpected ways.
Stalin, in
plotting his many megalomaniacal projects, didn't limit
himself to transferring human populations. It turns out
he also had ideas about how to repopulate the animal
kingdom. In this case, the plan was to take thousands of
giant red king crabs, also known as Kamchatka crabs,
from their home in the North Pacific and drop them half
a world away into the Barents Sea near Murmansk, with
the hope of creating a new food source for the Arctic
waters of European Russia.
The Soviet leader did
not live to see his project come to fruition, but his
heirs dutifully carried out the transfer in the 1960s.
Thousands of the monster crabs, which measure more than
a meter across when mature, were loaded onto rail cars
for the seven-day journey from Vladivostok to the Kola
Peninsula. Others were transported by boat and dumped
overboard at their new home.
Unlike Stalin's
human exiles, the crabs quickly adapted to their new
environment. Apparently bereft of natural predators,
they began to breed in greater and greater numbers.
Fast forward 30 years and the Kamchatka critters
have spread to the waters of neighboring Norway. What
will be the impact on the local environment and what
will happen next? Aasmund Bjordal, chief researcher at
the state-run Norwegian Institute of Marine Research,
spoke to RFE/RL and said, "We don't really know yet. But
the main point is that we don't have any other crabs or
large crustaceans like lobsters and so forth in our
waters in the north. So it has no competitors for food
within its own family of animals, so that could be one
reason why the crab stock is growing so fast here."
Next to oil drilling, fishing is Norway's
largest industry. Some environmentalists fear that the
rapidly expanding crab population - which has doubled in
the past five years, according to some estimates, and
now numbers about 15 million - could soon interfere with
the natural food chain, potentially edging out key fish
species.
Andreas Tveteraas, conservation
director at the Norwegian chapter of the WWF (formerly
known as the World Wildlife Fund), explains. "The
keystone fish species of the Barents Sea, the capelin,
has eggs that lie on the bottom of the coastal areas of
the sea in the spring, which is the same time that huge
flocks of young crabs eat virtually all they can get on
the sea bottom. So we fear that the predation from the
crabs on the capelin eggs may have profound impacts in
the wider ecosystem as the capelin is the main food for,
for example, the cod in the Arctic," he said.
That puts the Norwegian government in a bind.
Although Norway's cod stocks, for now, represent a far
more valuable economic resource than the crabs, that
could change in the future. Meat from the so-called
Kamchatka crabs is a high-priced delicacy that can
retail for $100 per kilo. With each individual crab
weighing some 10 kilograms, it is easy to see how
visions of a "crab-meat bonanza" are pushing some
officials to call for viewing the maritime invaders as a
precious resource to be managed - not suppressed.
Bjordal says, "At the moment, there is a
discussion in Norway whether this crab should be managed
as a valuable resource or if it should be regarded as an
alien species that should be kept down and kept as low
as possible, as far as the population size."
For
now, the Oslo authorities say they are following a
prudent resource-management policy, allowing a limited
annual catch of the crabs - although this year, the
quota has been doubled from 100,000 to 200,000 animals,
in view of the expanding population.
Tveteraas
of the WWF believes that the government's quota rules
will actually promote the massive expansion of the crab
stocks. He says he is firmly opposed to the rules. "The
problem with the fishing that is allowed today is that
you are only allowed to fish male adult crabs while the
females and juveniles are protected. So this is a
management that is actually set up to make the
population increase. What we want to see is a scientific
program to monitor the ecological impacts. But most
important, we think that we have to get the population
under control, at least until we have knowledge about
the impact. So we want open fishing on all stages of the
species, females, males and juveniles and, if necessary,
we would like the state to invest money in having an
intensive fishery to stop the crab from expanding
further."
Last December, the Norwegian chapter
of the WWF addressed a letter to the United Nations in
which it accused Norway of violating key portions of the
world body's Convention on Biological Diversity, which
Oslo signed in 1992. That convention obligates members
to "prevent the introduction of [and to] control or
eradicate those alien species which threaten ecosystems,
habitats or species." The Norwegian government counters
that it did not introduce the giant crab to Norway and
cannot eradicate it. It maintains that the current quota
policy will stabilize the population.
But
Tveteraas says the crabs are set for further exponential
growth. "It takes between six and seven years for a
female crab to become mature. So there's a time lag,
which means that the explosion we have seen in the last
years is caused by a relatively few females that were
mature six or seven years ago. Now there are millions of
immature females that, as they get mature, will cause an
even more explosive growth of the population."
Tveteraas says that Norway is playing Russian
roulette with one of its most important natural
resources - the Barents Sea. He notes the severe
economic impact that the introduction of alien species
has had in other aquatic environments, notably the zebra
mussels' invasion of the United States' and Canada's
Great Lakes.
Carried over by ships from Europe
in the 1980s, the tiny mussels quickly spread to all
corners of the Great Lakes and their tributary river
systems, clogging electric-power generation stations,
drinking-water treatment plants, industrial facilities,
navigation locks, and dam structures throughout much of
the eastern half of North America and causing hundreds
of millions of dollars in damage.
Something
similar, Tveteraas fears, could happen to Norway. "There
are too many examples around the world of introduced
species causing major economic and ecological damage,
and we think that there is no point in taking this risk
in the Barents Sea. The Barents Sea is already giving
huge economic outputs from its fish stocks. So let's not
gamble. Let's find out the effects of this crab before
we let it explode."
Bjordal, of the Norwegian
Institute of Marine Research, is less categorical in his
assessment. The main thing, he says, is that nobody
knows how far the crab population is likely to expand
and how far south it will spread. There is simply too
little data. Asked for his personal opinion of what to
do with the new Red Army, Bjordal refuses to be drawn
out.
"That's a political question, really," he
says. A political question - like all of Stalin's
legacies.
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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