Wildlife of the James

Blue Crab
Callinectes sapidus

by Gabe Silver
JRA Environmental Educator

“There are crabs here?”
That’s the average response during an eco-paddle trip when we find a blue crab in the James River just a few miles downriver of Richmond. The blue crab, symbol and economic bastion of the Chesapeake Bay, can be found throughout the lower James particularly in dry summer months.  Male crabs are known to explore further up the James then females, who prefer the salty depths in the middle of the Bay. The blue crab, having fascinated and fed us well, bears a scientific name meaning “delicious beautiful swimmer.”  Blue crabs

• are a vital predator and prey item in the aquatic food chain
• eats just about everything from fish to shellfish to vegetation to other crabs
• are eaten by oysters, menhaden, striped bass, drum, and many birds at different stages in its life cycle
• thrive in underwater grass beds that provide shelter for young and for molting and mating
• have three pairs of walking legs, one pair of swimming legs, and a pair of formidable claws (the males are blue while the females have red tips)
• mate after the female molts through her final “soft-shell” phase, during which the male cradles and protects the female
• go through a planktonic larval stage in which they drift towards the ocean before they mature and swim back towards the Bay and its rivers
• have been severely set back as a species by overharvesting, pollution, and the loss of aquatic grasses, however…

Throughout the Bay, the blue crab population appears to be rebounding as a result of stringent harvest restrictions. That’s great news for this fishery, which is worth over $50 million a year. The blue crab harvest in the Chesapeake and its tributaries like the James will become even more important in light of the BP oil well leaking crude into the Gulf of Mexico. Domestically harvested blue crabs in the U.S. come predominately from the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, so pressure to harvest Virginia’s crabs will surely grow. We need to remember these special and irreplaceable attributes of the Bay and the James River as we re-consider the idea of oil exploration off Virginia’s coast. The blue crab and its neighbors like the rockfish, oysters, menhaden and clams are a scarce and valuable resource that would be a shame to waste.

We want to know where you see or catch crabs in the James River, and the changes you see in their population. Email Gabe at gsilver@jrava.org.

Learn More:
Virginia Institute of Marine Science Blue Crab Page:
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Brief Video on molting and mating in blue crabs:

Missed a month? View the archived articles >>