Wednesday June 25, 2025
Cascadia Daily News —
On a cloudy Friday morning, a group of volunteers huddled on the shore of the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, peering over Angelica Lucchetto’s shoulder at an array of shed crab exoskeletons, called molts.
“You can tell this is a green crab because it has five marginal teeth,” explained Lucchetto, an invasive species specialist at the Reserve, pointing out the spikes along the front of a spotted greenish molt.
At that same time, similar groups gathered across the Salish Sea as part of a “Molt Blitz” to see if they could find any molts belonging to the invasive European green crab.
Though invasive crabs are a concern to ecosystems across Puget Sound, Padilla Bay must protect something extra special: 8,000 acres of eelgrass.