A recent study has shown that Caribbean king crabs may be part on the answer to restoring coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea. After coral reefs has been impacted by factors such as overfishing, pollution or climate change, seaweed often takes over the area and prevent coral from regenerating. Scientists working around the Florida Keys in 2015-2015 experimentally increased numbers of native king crabs by catching and releasing them in high densities. As well as the control, left without crabs, there was one treatment where crabs were released and another where crabs were released after the seaweed and algae had been scrubbed off the reef by divers.
At the start of the project, 85% of the reef was covered with seaweed. The area where crabs were released by themselves saw seaweed cover drop by 50% while areas where crabs were released after scrubbing had seaweed cover drop by 80%. A repeat experiment on another site had very similar results.
The findings suggest that there may be merit in starting to raise large numbers of king crabs in nursery facilities for release, to join the coral nurseries already in place.
An article about the research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-seaweed-munching-crabs-coral-reefs.html
The full research paper is included here:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31674-2
At the start of the project, 85% of the reef was covered with seaweed. The area where crabs were released by themselves saw seaweed cover drop by 50% while areas where crabs were released after scrubbing had seaweed cover drop by 80%. A repeat experiment on another site had very similar results.
The findings suggest that there may be merit in starting to raise large numbers of king crabs in nursery facilities for release, to join the coral nurseries already in place.
An article about the research is included here:
https://phys.org/news/2020-12-seaweed-munching-crabs-coral-reefs.html
The full research paper is included here:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31674-2