Project Title: Developing a method to survey blue crabs on oyster farms in southern Cape Cod
Duration: June 2025-December 2025
Funding Source(s): Internal funding from Wellesley College
Principal Investigator: Becca Selden, Wellesley College
Contact: rs5@wellesley.edu
Project Description: As blue crabs are moving poleward with warming waters, they are increasing in abundance at their historic range edge in southern Cape Cod and increasingly being found further north in the Gulf of Maine. Oyster farmers are frequent observers of blue crabs and green crabs in and around their gear. We are interested in developing a survey that could be deployed at oyster farms throughout the region as a sentinel of the blue crab range expansion. We have partnered with oyster farms in Waquoit Bay, Cotuit Bay, and Barnstable to identify protocols for surveying different types of oyster gear and to identify emergent patterns on crab spatial distributions as a function of season and linked to environmental variables collected at nearby water quality sampling stations. In WBNERR we are working with the town of Falmouth oyster farm within Waquoit Bay. We will record the number, size, and sex of crabs on or in their array of floating gear, and relate that to gear design and mesh size. The pilot project will begin in Summer 2025 and sampling will occur monthly throughout the summer and fall of 2025.
