MagicManICT wrote:Vigilance wrote:how vile
If you've eaten shrimp, crab, or lobster, you've eaten a relative of all other invertebrates. It's more getting past that idea of "eating a bug." Some are quite tasty, others are just bleh. (Fun fact: lobsters used to be considered the cockroaches of the sea... at least in the US.)
Eating crabs was very common a few hundred years ago, but it was not appreciated, people thought of crabs as food of the poor people. In ancient rome, crabs were actually given to slaves, because people thought that crabs were not worthy food for humans.
During 17th century everything changed, crabs became trendy food in Paris among the rich, and soon the word spread.
Crabs became valuable and one hard working crab-fisher could make enough money for his family by few weeks of work in Finland, by fishing crabs during the season.
During best years there were over 15 million crabs fished in Finland (which is a lot, when population is less than 2 000 000, consisting mostly of people not fishing crabs).
But then, americans ruined it all! Crab-plague(direct translation from finnish) came, from US, which killed most of crabs from Europe to almost extinction, crab populations have still not recovered (after 100+ years) and the crab-plague is still a big nuisance today for crabs. These days crabs are very expensive delicacy.
http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161511/MMM_4_2019_rapustrategia.pdf I found an interesting document about Finland's national crab-strategy for years 2019-2022, crab catch has been only few million crabs lately, mostly of the invasive species that is more resistant to the plague than the native Finnish specie.