Why Don't We Eat Female Crabs?

Why can you only keep male crabs? On most of the West Coast, every Dungeness crab you catch gets flipped over and checked, and the females go straight back into the ocean, even when they're the biggest crab in the trap. Here's the science behind the male-only crab rule, one of the oldest fishing regulations in North America. In this video we look at how to tell male and female crabs apart, why California banned keeping female crabs back in 1897, and the "3 S" system of sex, size and season that still runs the Dungeness crab fishery today. You'll learn how Dungeness crabs mate, why females can store sperm for up to two and a half years, and how the crab size limit gives males a breeding season before they can be caught. Then we compare it with Chesapeake Bay, where harvesting female blue crabs helped push the fishery into a federal disaster declaration in 2008. Whether you go crabbing in BC, Washington, Oregon or California, or you just like eating crab, this is why the rule exists and why it has worked for over a century. Timestamps: 0:00 Why crabbers throw back the biggest crab 1:00 Do female crabs taste worse? 2:02 The 1897 rule and the 3 S's 3:20 Why female crabs matter more 5:31 Does the male-only rule actually work? 6:29 What happened in Chesapeake Bay References: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Commercial Dungeness Crab Fishery https://www.dfw.state.or.us/mrp/shell... California Ocean Protection Council / CDFW, Dungeness Crab Marine Species Report https://opc.ca.gov/webmaster/_media_l... NOAA Fisheries, West Coast Dungeness Crab Stable or Increasing Even With Intensive Harvest (2020) https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/featur... Maryland DNR, Scientists Look Back at Two Decades of Blue Crab Management (2024) https://news.maryland.gov/dnr/2024/06... Hankin, D.G., Butler, T.H., Wild, P.W. and Xue, Q.L. (1997). Does intense fishing on males impair mating success of female Dungeness crabs? Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. Richerson, K., Punt, A.E. and Holland, D.S. (2020). Nearly a half century of high but sustainable exploitation in the Dungeness crab fishery. Fisheries Research.