“Great news,” said Anna Belback, a natural resource technician with the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell Ranger District. Surveyors have not found any invasive European green crabs in their shoreline walks and traps on the northwest coast of Etolin Island.

Even more good news: None of the destructive crabs have been found around Anan Bay either, reported Paul Robbins, public affairs officer for the Tongass National Forest.

“It was really good habitat in general for crabs that like intertidal areas,” Belback said of the Etolin Island search. “We saw a ton of crabs, and none of them were European green crabs. So that was great news.”

Crews looked in August around King George Bay and Steamer Bay, along the island’s northwest coast, she said.

“I’m hoping to get out one more time before everything kind of slows down and before my season ends.” Belback said she would like to go farther south along Etolin in a September search.

The destructive crabs, which were first discovered in Alaska in 2022 at Annette Island, have moved north and were found last October at a bay north of Cooney Cove on Etolin Island, across Clarence Strait from Blashke Islands.

“I’ve been trying to go as close to there as possible,” Belback said of Cooney Cove. “But Clarence Strait is notoriously kind of a nasty body of water, and it’s just kind of a far place for us to go for everything to align with the tides and whatnot.”

The Forest Service used traps provided by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which also provided instructions on how to conduct shoreline surveys. She said the Wrangell Cooperative Association helped with the Steamer Bay search.

“It’s not just the traps that we’re setting each time we go out. … We go out, we set our traps on the beach, and then after that we do a beach walk for 20 minutes … looking for carapace,” which crab shed as they molt.

“So far, with the beach walk and the trapping, we have not seen any evidence of the European green crab yet,” Belback said.

“Unfortunately, though, I think it’s kind of just a matter of time before we do see them. I don’t think it’s like something that we can really prevent because they’ve already been really like heavily documented in Metlakatla and Ketchikan area … and Clarence Strait is kind of a straight shot.”

She noted that because crab larvae “are carried around by the currents, they’re eventually going to end up here.”

The U.S. Forest Service stepped up earlier this summer when Fish and Game put out a call for volunteers to walk beaches and set traps to look for the crabs.

“Despite their name, European green crabs are not always green — they can range from orange, yellow and red to brown or grey,” according to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. “The most definitive way to identify them is by counting the five sharp spines behind each eye, and the three rounded bumps directly between the eyes.”

The green crab is considered “one of the most invasive species in the marine environment,” according to the federal fisheries service. “It has few predators, aggressively hunts and eats its prey, destroys seagrass and outcompetes local species for food and habitat.”

The description is ominous: “It has been documented that green crab devour juvenile king crab as well as juvenile salmon. They also destroy eelgrass habitat that larval fish use to hide from predators and outcompete Dungeness crabs for food and habitat.”

The invasive crabs arrived in North America in the 1800s, likely in the ballast water of ships from Europe before coming to the West Coast the same way, the federal agency reports.

Belback said anyone who finds a crab or carapace should take a photo, note the location, freeze the specimen and contact Fish and Game.

For more information, call the Invasive Species Hotline 1-877-468-2748 or email dfg.dsf.InvasiveSpecies@alaska.gov.