King crabs are rampant. Is eating them saving the ecology?

As the saying goes, "scarcity makes things valuable", so a king crab that costs around 2,000 yuan must be very rare, right? The answer is exactly the opposite.

This thing is not only not a rare creature, but also has the tendency to flood. Some people joked: "Every time you eat a king crab, you are saving the world." According to this statement, the cost of saving the world is really high. Although the king crab has the word "crab" in its name, strictly speaking, they are not real crabs. The crabs we usually call belong to the class of soft armor, the order of decapods, and the suborder of gastropods, while the king crab is a creature of the class of soft armor, the order of decapods, and the suborder of amphiura, belonging to the family of stone crabs. They can only be regarded as relatives of crabs, not the same kind. King crabs live in the ocean and can adapt to a depth of up to 850 meters. Cold waters are their favorite habitat, and the most suitable living temperature is between 2℃-5℃.

The king crabs in the aquarium look very majestic, and it's not just for show, because in the ocean, they are indeed top predators.

King crabs have a wide range of food, including fish, shrimp, starfish, and sea cucumbers. They eat anything they can catch, and they even eat each other when food is scarce. The vast food range, strong physique, and hard armor make them extremely aggressive creatures. Wherever the king crabs pass, the living space of other animals will be greatly compressed. If there is anything that can limit the invasion of king crabs, it should be temperature. King crabs like cold waters, but the temperature cannot be too low. If the water temperature is below 1.4℃, then the king crabs will not be able to survive for a long time, so at the beginning, king crabs only existed in the cold waters of the North Pacific.

The number of king crabs living in the North Pacific is basically controllable because there are natural enemies of king crabs, wolf fish and giant octopuses.

Although the number of wolffish and giant octopus is not large, they can limit the expansion of king crabs to a certain extent. Later, king crabs came to the Barents Sea in the Arctic Ocean along with the warm current. Once here, king crabs immediately began their own expansion. With their extremely fast reproduction speed, it didn’t take long before large groups of king crabs could be seen near the Svalbard Islands in Norway. This powerful creature will become the top predator in the local waters wherever it goes, and the local marine ecology will suffer a huge impact. King crabs not only expanded to the north, but also to Antarctica.

Scientists from Ghent University in Belgium used submarines to discover no less than one million king crabs on the continental shelf near Antarctica. For people with trypophobia, this is an unbearable sight.

As for the invasion of king crabs in Antarctica, it was all thanks to the help of humans. Although king crabs like cold waters, they cannot stand being too cold, and the water temperature in Antarctica obviously does not meet the survival needs of king crabs. However, in recent years, the trend of global warming has intensified, and the water temperature in the Antarctic waters, especially in the western Antarctic waters, has risen rapidly. King crabs seized this opportunity and quickly occupied this new territory. In the Antarctic waters, king crabs can be said to have no natural enemies at all, so their numbers have only increased. The ecosystem in the Antarctic waters is relatively fragile and cannot withstand the harm of king crabs. Now many marine creatures that originally lived here have become extinct due to the invasion of king crabs.

King crabs are rampant, so eating king crabs is really beneficial to the ecology. However, it is not possible to eliminate king crabs by eating them because their price is too high.

King crabs are so rampant, why are they still so expensive? Because no matter how large the number of king crabs grows, it will still be difficult to catch them. King crabs live in cold waters with strong winds and rough seas. Fishing in such waters is already dangerous, and catching king crabs is even more difficult. Currently, the only way to catch king crabs is to "traps." A huge steel crab cage is sunk to the bottom of the sea, and the bait in the cage is used to lure the king crabs into the cage, and then the crab cage is salvaged.

The process of catching king crabs seems simple, but it is actually full of dangers.

The weight of these steel crab cages is more than 300 kilograms, and the weight of the king crabs will seriously affect the balance of the hull. In addition, the wind and waves in the crab fishing area are relatively strong, and the risk factor will be multiplied. According to past statistics, during the crab fishing season, 4 or 5 crab fishermen lose their lives every month due to crab fishing. If it were not for extremely generous rewards, no one would be willing to do such a dangerous job. Generally, crab fishing at sea only lasts for a few days, and in these few days, each crab fisherman can get a salary equivalent to more than 1 million yuan. The salary of crab fishermen is so high, and the price of king crabs is naturally high. Unless more advanced and safe crab fishing methods appear in the future, there is no hope of suppressing the expansion of king crabs by eating them.

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