Talk:Callinectes sapidus

Disambiguation from other Blue Crabs, sorted biologically
There is at least one other "blue crab" eg. Portunus pelagicus, also known as the flower crab, blue crab, blue swimmer crab, blue manna crab or sand crab. So we need to disabmiguate - at the moment P. pelagicus is only available via biological name.

A possible solution would be to make Blue_crab the disambiguation page, noting the geographic choices and then direct people to the biologically correct page. To have Callinectes sapidus redirect to Blue crab seems to be back-to-front.

I'm happy to do the work, but wanted some input from the community before moving.

The same problem applies to sand crab (Ovalipes australiensis vs Hippoidea)or swimmer crab C. sapidus vs Liocarcinus depurator vs Liocarcinus marmoreus


 * Thoglette (talk) 03:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Added an otheruses4 link to P. Pelagicus for now. Thoglette (talk) 00:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The Evil Plan

 * 1) move current Blue Crab content to C. Sapidus, overwriting redirect (as move won't work)
 * 2) replace Blue Crab with the content below

Blue Crab can refer a number of species including: disambig
 * Callinectes sapidus found in the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico
 * Portunus pelagicus found in the intertidal estuaries of the Indian and Pacific Oceans (Asian coasts) and the Middle-Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea


 * Thoglette (talk) 13:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
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The actual crab?
Reading the article you get the idea that the only thing man knows about blue crabs is how to eat them; that's what 90% of this article is centered around. How about information on the actual animal, and not just the fact that people think they're tasty? 68.205.84.223 (talk) 21:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, Mr. anonymous IP, how about now? Rkaufman13 (talk) 16:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I would still like to see more included about the life cycle, ecological importance, identification etc of the blue crab. It's still a little human-uses heavy. Also, wouldn't it make more sense to include the 'why are blue crabs blue' part under the description of the animal itself, such as in a sub heading, rather than an entire section of its own? I will add a little bit about the ecological role, but I don't have a huge depth of knowledge about it, so I will keep it short. Foxi tails (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)foxi_tails
 * I just added some details to the description section. I plan to expand the life cycle section soon since it is lacking much detail and doesn't distinguish patterns observed along the East Coast/Chesapeake from the Gulf of Mexico.

Even though I'm a crab-crazy Marylander, I would agree with Foxi tails. This SHOULD be about the species– not about how to eat them. There are a few "crab feast/boil" etc. pages where culinary aspects would be more apropos. I would propose a "Maryland Crab Feast" page since there is not one, as such, and it is most likely we Marylanders who can't stop rambling on about crabs and how we prepare them.--Psf11 (talk) 21:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

source of refereneces
Check out Beautiful Swimmers, a well-known book about Chesapeake blue crabs. It will be a valuable source of references and additions to harvesting techniques, among other things. The harvesting section does not discuss dredging, for instance. AJim (talk) 15:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the cleanup carried out to remove a lot of the harvesting information has been over done. In particular there does not seem to be a sufficient description of this crab as a powerful swimmer, which is not an attribute that most people would think applies to a crab, and for which skill the crab is named. Anyone who cares to shine a light into the Chesapeake at night can see the crabs swimming near the surface for themselves. There is an excellent description of their swimming in Warner's book. The crabs literally migrate hundreds of miles, and they do not walk all that way. --AJim (talk) 05:16, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

The blue crab- I think it's the same total little devil as the Chesapeake lays claim to- is a major player in New Orleans cuisine. And having one chomp a toe in a tidal pool was a childhood rite of passage before our geography changed so much. There's absolutly no mention of this, despite crabbing and crab meat being a big part of a huge local fishing industry. Or former huge industry, the BP oil spill put the hurt on the western Gulf pretty badly. Even brackish water species like crabs can be oiled and toxic now; but there isn't a word about preferred habitat (salt or brackish?) life cycle, no science! And I'm talking about the Gulf of Mexico. And waters along it- crabbing in Lake Pontchartrain is common, as is same along roadsides. As for food and drink? Leaving out a thing of beauty such as Crab Sardou makes that a very hollow subject heading, then there's soft shell crab, soft shell crab po-boys, we can run neck to nose with the Cheasapeake any day on how to eat them. Our neck, lol. But I came to Wiki hoping to polish up before getting scathing about BP; I was amazed that there's no mention of Louisiana/ Gulf under blue crabs, and that there's no basic science to start it off. Here's hoping I'm signing correctly as I don't have a clue. Copying you,AJim. MissBike (talk) 5:04, 17 June 2011

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion below. - GTBacchus(talk) 20:13, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Blue crab → Callinectes sapidus — There are at least three blue crab articles that have about equal claim to this title. In particular, the European Portunus pelagicus is in the hatnote, but the Asian Portunus trituberculatus, the most widely fished species of crab in the world, is left out. Since the shelling of South Korea by North Korea is generating press on Portunus trituberculatus fishing disputes, people will be looking up "Blue crab" and getting the wrong species. After the move the Blue crab redirect will be made into a nice disambig page. Abductive (reasoning) 18:16, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. &mdash;innotata 16:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support. AshLin (talk) 16:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Any reasons? —   AjaxSmack   23:37, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I agree with the logic of what is proposed above. AshLin (talk) 04:22, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:UCN (use common names) and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. There's no ambiguity.  Portunus pelagicus and Portunus trituberculatus are not commonly called "blue crab".  On the other hand, the blue crab is a highly notable animal widely harvested and consumed in English-speaking countries and known by that name exclusively.  Let Google help you out (Web Images Books Scholar).  Every single one of the first page of hits are about only one species.  —   AjaxSmack   23:37, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's not even true. In the first page of Google Image results, there is a Malawi Blue Crab, Potamonautes orbitospinus, and on the second, a Christmas Island Blue Crab Cardisoma hirtipes. Also see for the name of the meat and what is called blue crab in the Philippines. The critter on this page is known as the Atlantic blue crab, by the way. Abductive  (reasoning) 01:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. --Epipelagic (talk) 07:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support per nom; I've just come from the Korean maritime border incidents page; the Blue Crab they are talking about isn't this one. Xyl 54 (talk) 00:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Male vs. Female
I feel that an image would be a great way to distinguish the difference between a male and a female blue crab. An image like this one would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TravisBernard (talk • contribs) 23:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

On usage of "Blue crab" (or "Atlantic blue crab") vs. "C. Sapidus"
Having had my edits undone, I propose that the nomenclature of "blue crab" be used within the article. While the article title is perhaps ambiguous, the name within the article has already been disambiguated, its common name shortly following, therefore its usage within the article should not be ambiguous. Numerous other articles have the taxonomic name as the article head (see Fragaria vesca, while using the common English name within the article. If disambiguation is the main concern, then what of the lengthened English name of Atlantic blue crab or Chesapeake blue crab? Cheers Morgan Riley (talk) 14:42, 11 September 2012 (UTC) More examples, this time from other crab articles: Paralithodes platypus and Paralithodes camtschaticus. Morgan Riley (talk) 14:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Article Needs More on Decline of, and Efforts to Better Manage, Chesapeake Bay Crab Fisheries
This is a major story in the papers, running from the early 90s up to the present. News articles would be good sources. Also the impact on commercial crabbing communities like Smith Island, Maryland; Tangiers Island, Virgina; St. Marys County, Maryland; and of course the Maryland and Virginia Eastern Shore communities as well. 107.218.9.122 (talk) 23:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This article contains very little about blue crab management in both the Chesapeake and in the Gulf of Mexico. I plan to add information about both areas, as the ecosystems and management practices are very different and information is plentiful in both the news and peer reviewed literature. Karkinos19 (talk) 21:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There's no information on gear used in the industry. I'm adding a new section with a few details regarding the topic. Karkinos19 (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

male vs. female
I was trying to use the examples in this article to distinguish between male and female of this individual and it does not seem to match neither. Is this article's fault or this crab is abnormal? --Jarekt (talk) 17:11, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd say that crab fits the description "unusual". It looks like a female to me, but not the typical pattern that's shown in the article.   Lime in the Coconut   17:10, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This crab is an immature female. After the female's terminal molt, their abdomen changes from triangular to dome-shaped in appearance. This is mentioned in the description section of the article. Karkinos19 (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Fishery Information Outdated or Lacking
Much of the information about the fishery appears to be outdated or incomplete. The history of the blue crab fishery is rich and fascinating, and has been well documented. I have access to some excellent blue crab resources and would like to add more historical information. Additionally, since blue crab landings have changed regionally in the past decade, I plan to update/add to the numbers so that they reflect the most recent publicly available landings data. Karkinos19 (talk) 21:24, 23 February 2015 (UTC)