Declawing of crabs

Declawing of crabs is the process whereby one or both claws of a live crab (including king crabs) are manually pulled off and the animal is then returned to the water. It occurs in several fisheries worldwide, such as in the Florida stone crab (Menippe mercenaria) fishery, the north-east Atlantic deep-water red crab (Chaceon affinis) fishery and in southern Iberia, where the major claws of the fiddler crab Uca tangeri are harvested. Around Northern Europe, an extensive fishery exists for claws of the edible crab, Cancer pagurus. The practice is defended because some crabs can naturally autotomise (shed) limbs and then about a year later after a series of moults, regenerate these limbs. It is argued that declawing therefore provides a sustainable fishery. Claw removal is also promoted to assist in handling of animals, and to decrease losses through entanglement in nets and cannibalism. Declawing crabs is legal in the UK since revocation in 2000 of the Crab Claws (Prohibition of Landing) Order 1986. One crab that is subject to widespread declawing is the Florida stone crab, for which tourist information is provided.

To perform declawing, the claws are snapped downward away from the crab. To ensure a clean break along the natural fracture plane, one finger is placed on the basal cheliped joint. With the cheliped fully extended, a quick, firm downward motion normally removes the claw cleanly. The break usually occurs at the basi-ischum between the coxa at the base of the leg and the merus.

In the 1976–77 trapping season, about 50,000 kg of claws were harvested in the Everglades National Park. This was probably less than 5% of the total Floridian harvest, which has averaged more than 1,000,000 kilograms since 1974.

In Florida during the 1995–96 to 2004–05 fishing seasons, fishers declawed approximately 10.5 million crabs during each 7-month fishing season. The weight of crab claws landings varied without trend since 1989–90. Peak landings were 1.6 million kg statewide in the 1997–98 fishing season. Statewide landings for 2004–05 were 1.4 million kg of claws.

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