Hi Jason, can you introduce yourself?
Jason: Hi I’m Jason Jarvis and I’m a commercial fisherman out of Westerly, Rhode Island. I’m also on the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council and I’m the Board President of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. I’ve been fishing ever since I was a kid and I’ve been in the commercial fishing industry for close to 25 years. I started trapping green crabs 9 years ago for blackfish bait for the charter boat that I worked on. Now I’m fully involved in catching green crabs for bait and food.
How did you get involved in the green crab fishery?
I got involved in the green crab fishery by accident. I worked for a captain on a gillnetter and in the off-season when we weren’t fishing he started setting green crab traps. Once we started doing it I helped him and realized he was actually making decent money selling green crabs. But when the pandemic hit the fishery I was in pretty much collapsed and there was no demand. My wife and I are self-employed anyways and had to shift things around. We started doing grocery delivery apps and that sort of stuff and then midway through the year thanks to GreenCrab.org I started getting phone calls for green crab bait because nobody else was doing it in my area. The crazy part is I was not in a good place. It was pretty tough to realize your job has disappeared because of a pandemic we didn’t expect to happen and didn’t have a warning for. So I started trapping green crabs. Every morning I’d lay my traps and I started pulling green crabs 3-4 times a week and from August to the first week of September I’d made $11,000 selling green crabs. So yeah, it gave me purpose and something to do.
Have you worked with any species impacted by green crabs?
Well that’s interesting too. I’ve worked in every part of the industry from commercial fishing to recreational fishing to charter fishing. I realized that green crabs love eating small oysters, soft-shell clams, and any mollusk they can break the lip of the shell. The oyster industry has been hard-hit by green crabs over the years. If a green crab gets into a bag of oyster seed they can also do a lot of damage. But I’ve also seen that they’re pushing out other species. They’re so abundant in Winnapaug Pond where I am that you don’t see many blue crabs there anymore. The pond can only support so many species and the green crab biomass there is pretty large (although I put a pretty good dent in it last year).
I’m a big fan of seafood and I won’t let the cat out of the bag yet but I’m working on something with my boss that involves green crabs and oysters. It’s serendipitous considering green crabs are oyster predators.
Do you mostly sell green crabs for the bait market?
Yes and it’s still really funny because when I tell people you can eat them they look at you sideways. I’m like “well people used to think lobsters were garbage and they fed them to prisoners”. Look at our history. Monkfish was a trash fish, skate was a trash fish and now they’re some of the highest grossing seafood products in the country. I was skeptical at first and then I ate some.
What are some of your favorite ways to eat green crabs?
They can be a bit of work to process so I like taking the roe or a broth to make chowder or seafood stew. I like taking some of the roe and bigger meat and making a seafood chowder with blackfish, scallops, mussels, green crab roe, and green crab broth. It’s amazing because the broth adds a different level of flavor. It’s not just a clam or fish broth. But I need to experiment more! Don’t knock it until you try it.
In terms of looking at expanding the green crab fishery, are you one of the only green crab harvesters in your area? Have you seen more people enter the industry in recent years?
In South County there’s really only 3 of us and I also know of somebody on Block Island. Four people in the state with so many green crabs definitely means I’ll expand. But I need a motor for my boat first.
What barriers do you see for expanding the green crab fishery?
I think that close-minded thinking when it comes to our food system is a major barrier. People don’t think of green crabs as food but they’ve thought of them as food in Europe for a hundred years or more so we’re just behind the times. The biggest obstacle is creating the market and we’ll get there. It’s a matter of just getting people to try them.
How did Covid impact your work with green crabs?
Green crabs saved our lives. We’re headed back to covid restrictions and all of that again and it’s really been an eye opener for our country when it comes to our food system. We realized with COVID that our entire food system can be shut down overnight. I’m very happy to chow down on a bucket of green crabs as a food source and feel very grateful for that. I think we’re getting there because the food system in our country has to change and we have no choice. We can’t depend on other people to feed us.
In terms of Rhode Island shifting to let harvesters sell directly to people, how has that impacted your business?
Well for me we were always allowed to sell green crabs and lobsters from the dock but we weren’t allowed to deliver them legally. Now we have dockside sales and can deliver, when in the past people had to come to me to get green crabs which was a logistical nightmare and very costly since you needed permission from a Marina and a slip. It’s been a game-changer for a lot of people, especially smaller boats.
What advice do you have for somebody who wants to enter the green crab fishery?
Well I tell them to go for it. Start our slow but there are people who want them for bait and there are also people who want to try them for food if you promote them. Get a handful of people to try them and then you can move on from there. It’s definitely a business that’s going to expand like the skate fishery before anyone realizes you can eat them. Take it slow, figure out a market. And of course shout out to you guys because if it wasn’t for GreenCrab.org I wouldn’t have gotten the business I’ve gotten. It’s where a lot of new people find me.
How do you see climate change impacting the green crab fishery and other fisheries?
I’ve been catching finger mullet for 10 years and they’re delicious and make great striper bait and sea bass bait. But they’re moving poleward. 10-12 years ago people never thought about sea bass being a major fishery here and now they’re a big fishery. Go out in the ocean and you’ll see climate change in action. In New York they’re catching cobia and tarpon. We have more sharks up here. It’s all happening faster than people think.
To purchase green crabs from Jason and other harvesters, head over to our Where To Buy page.
