Bitter Crab Disease for Blue Crabs

It's no surprise thinking that Blue crabs will also reach their own diseases and get sick as well considering it happens to all animals although we do not often think about it. Blue crabs have many diseases which can actually be fairly easy to identify once you get the hang of it. Among the many diseases that they may receive is one known as the Bitter Crab disease or otherwise known as the Dinoflagellate blood disease.

The Bitter Crab Disease is caused by a blood parasite which is a type of Dinoflagellate. Dinoflagellates are a large group of flagellate protists found in marine environment, and make up the largest group of eukaryotic algae aside from the diatoms. The dinoflagellates are a parasite to the Blue crabs as they will consume the oxygen from the crab's blood and tissues which weakens them, and will eventually cause them to die.

The dinoflagellates which affect the Blue crabs, known as the Hematodinium sp, can produce epizootics which is an outbreak of disease affecting many organisms of the same kind all at once. Epizootics are most prevalent in warm conditions with high salinity in the water. In the United States of America, Epizootics have been reported in Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and Florida, and ocean-bays of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia in the spring and fall.

Epizootics can affect a large number of Blue crabs all at once. For example, an incident in October 1996 showed that the epizootics affected 20 - 50% perfect of the legal crabs along Virginia. Lower percentages of crabs found with epizootics were caught at the bay, and the crabs found with the higher percentages of epizootics were farther off. However, epizootics is quite a deadly disease for the blue crabs as once they infect the blue crabs, they will grow rapidly, and affect the crab severely causing them to die over the course of three to six weeks.

The Blue crabs will have their blood change to a milky-white color, and they will also lose their ability to clot their blood. Signs that the Blue Crab suffered from the Bitter Crab Disease is most obvious when they are cooked as they will turn pink when it is partially cooked. Early stages can be detected under a microscope. Crabs infected by this disease will often by found dead in the watermen's traps or crab pots, and the infected crabs are rather weak with drooping limbs, and not much energy to put up a fight.

The disease gets its name from the fact that when cooked, the crab has a chalky texture, and a bitter flavor to it which causes the consumer to not want it anymore. Luckily for us, this disease has no known impact for its consumers - only the bad taste!

Blue crabs have their diseases as well, and the bitter crab disease is surely an interesting one to learn about. If you ever come a cross a dead-looking blue crab which when cooked tasted bitter, you'll know that it wasn't your cooking at all!