The spider crab may soon be out of danger.
After the red lobster in May, scientists from the Stella Mare laboratory based in Haute-Corse announced on Monday that they had succeeded in controlling the reproduction of the large Mediterranean spider.
In all, “more than 1200 juveniles” - an advanced stage of development before adulthood - have been obtained from this “protected species” at European level.
A "scientific advance" which should allow the preservation of this species.
Researchers guarantee "the survival of more than 70%" of them to date, announced the Stella Mare platform (Sustainable Technologies for Littoral Aquaculture and Marine Research), a laboratory dependent on the University of Corsica and the CNRS.
The species are between two and three centimeters tall and are over four months old.
All are currently bred in the aquariums of Stella Mare where they "already demonstrate their exceptional capacity for camouflage", the scientists congratulate themselves.
A species that has disappeared in the Mediterranean for 20 years
Endemic to the Mediterranean, the species
Maja squinado
was abundant in the years 1950-60 before a dramatic decline in stocks. So much so that it is now virtually absent from certain areas of the Mediterranean. It has disappeared from the Balearic Islands for more than 20 years, except around the island of Formentera where only a few specimens are taken each year. Since the end of the 1970s, the drop in yields has raised fears of “an exhaustion of stocks and an endangerment of the species”.
Thus, in Corsica, the catches of Maja squinado halved between 2011 and 2019. “This new advance opens the way to methods of re-stocking and compensating fishing activity in order to preserve the presence of the large Mediterranean spider ”, greet the scientists.
“Experiments to release individuals are already being considered,” they said.
Controlling reproduction of the large spider would have economic benefits: once preserved, the species "could help stem the decline in catches in Europe due to overfishing".
Read alsoOverfishing: "There are solutions to preserve fish"
For the red lobster, which is found on the Atlantic coast and in the Mediterranean, the control of reproduction, presented in May as "a major scientific advance", also opened the way to the preservation of the species.
She herself intervened after the control of the flat oyster, the European lobster or the purple sea urchin on the part of Stella Mare, recalls France 3 Corse.
