Edible crab

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The edible crab has a brown, oval shell with a pie-crust-like edge and heavy claws tipped in black. Its shell can reach about 25 cm across, and it is widely fished and eaten around the coasts of Europe.

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At a glance

Class: Crustaceans
Lives in: NE Atlantic coasts (UK, Ireland, Norway)
Diet: Meat eater (carnivore)
Habitat: coasts

Quick answers

Where does the Edible crab live?

It lives in coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. On the globe you can find it near NE Atlantic coasts (UK, Ireland, Norway).

What does the Edible crab eat?

Its diet: meat eater (carnivore).

The edible crab, also called the brown crab (Cancer pagurus), lives in the North Sea and the northeast Atlantic, from Norway in the north to North Africa in the south. It is a sturdy reddish-brown crab with an oval shell whose front edge is shaped into nine rounded lobes, like a pie crust. The tips of its claws are black.

An adult shell is typically 15 cm wide and can be up to 25 cm. A large one can weigh up to 3 kilograms. It lives on coarse ground, mud and sand from shallow water down to about 100 metres, often hiding in cracks and holes in rocks. It is the subject of the largest crab fishery in Western Europe, centred on the coasts of Ireland and Britain, with more than 60,000 tonnes caught every year. Young crabs are purple-brown.

A night hunter

Adult edible crabs are nocturnal. They hide buried in the sand or mud by day and go out at night, up to 50 metres from home. They eat other crabs, small crustaceans and many molluscs such as winkles, mussels and oysters. They may stalk or ambush prey, and sometimes dig large pits to reach buried shellfish. Their main enemy is the octopus, which even attacks them inside the traps that fishermen use.

Growing up

Mating happens in winter. The male stands over the female and forms a cage with his legs to protect her while she moults. The female then goes to a pit in the sea floor and carries between 250,000 and 3,000,000 eggs under her abdomen for up to eight months. The larva that hatches is only 1 mm long and drifts as plankton. Juveniles settle in the shore zone and move to deeper water at a width of 60 to 70 mm. A crab typically lives 25 to 30 years, and a few may live up to 100.

Fishing and rules

Crabs are caught in baited traps called creels. The catch rose from 26,000 tonnes in 1978 to 60,000 tonnes in 2007, with more than 70 percent caught around the British Isles, and the crab is thought to be overfished across much of this area. Catching females carrying eggs is illegal, and there are minimum landing sizes set by the European Union and the UK, which vary by region. Most British-caught crabs are exported live to France and Spain.

Fun facts

Also called the brown crab, it is the crab most often eaten in Britain; its shell has a 'pie-crust' edge.
The edge of its shell looks like a pie crust.
Octopuses even attack it inside fishermen's traps.
A female carries up to three million eggs.
A few crabs may live as long as 100 years.