shellfish, a women's company from Rimini, launches an appeal to Italian fishermen to push them to catch the blue crab, an alien species that has spread in the Adriatic Sea and now also in some areas of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and to sell it at a fixed price to the company that will take care of its transformation and export to international markets where it is a highly appreciated product.
The project is called Blueat – The Sustainable Fish Market, in collaboration with the company Tagliapietra e figli, born from the passion for the sea and its conservation of 5 young girls from Rimini, and started in December 2021 in order to transform an environmental problem into a resource for coastal fishing communities .
Alien species in our seas, Mariscadoras: "We need selective fishing"
The problem is that of invasive marine alien species, organisms that due to human activities and gods climate changes, have been transported from the ocean into our seas, adapting perfectly to the new habitat, multiplying and becoming a real problem for the balance of the delicate Adriatic ecosystem and the Mediterranean in general.
The solution proposed by the company and the young female entrepreneurs from Rimini is to promote the selective fishing and thus the consumption of alien species in human food, helping to reduce the damage that will be caused to the socio-economic and environmental system.
The female Rimini company: "We buy the blue crab"
Mariscadoras announces its willingness to purchase the entire quantity of blue crab fished in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas (FAO Area 37.2) at a agreed price at the fisherman's landing point or at the market of the cooperative that collects the catch of its artisan fishermen.
"Mariscadoras will guarantee the purchase of the product and the payment, providing individual fishermen or fishing cooperatives with all the necessary scientific and environmental assistance aimed at a sustainable fishing of the blue crab or blue crab (Callinectes sapidus)," he explained Charlotte Santolini, marine biologist and one of the creators of the Blueat project.
The blue crab: an invasive alien species for the Mediterranean
It is a crab from the family of Portunides, also called swimming crabs. Native to the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where it is highly regarded as it supports an important fishery. Since the beginning of the last century - thanks to repeated and independent introductions through the ballast waters of ships - the blue crab has invaded the coasts of many countries in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov and at least 12 Mediterranean countries, where instead is considered one invasive alien species. In the last decade, several researches have highlighted the high nutritional qualities of blue crab meat and small fisheries are currently found in Turkey and northern Greece.
