AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Blue crabs are a regional delicacy from the Chesapeake Bay to Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Top them with a little butter and add some Old Bay Seasoning, and you've got yourself a nice meal right there. But on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, these blue-clawed critters are wreaking havoc. They're considered an invasive species in Europe, so scientists are introducing predators in the Mediterranean Sea - octopi. Laura Gentile is a researcher at the University of Bologna who's working on the project. Laura, thank you for joining us.
LAURA GENTILE: Thank you for inviting me, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So why aren't people just eating these blue crabs? 'Cause, you know, we could send you a few recipes.
GENTILE: Yes, I know, but we are Italian. We have a very cultural food experience. I know that it's very good. We tried with a star chef to explain how to cook that. But the people say, yes, it's good, but it's not our crab. We love what we cook in general, and the new things are strange for us.
RASCOE: Oh, wow. So the Italians are like, these blue crabs - we're not used to these. We don't want to eat these (laughter).
GENTILE: Yeah. Exactly. Also because of the color. You know, it's blue. For us, it's strange because our crab is brown. So say, what is these things? It's blue - is why.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
GENTILE: Yeah.
RASCOE: OK. So because people don't want to eat them, you are getting some octopi to try to eat them so they're not overrunning the Mediterranean Sea. So tell us more about these crab-eating octopi.
GENTILE: We use the octopi as a natural predator to help contain the blue crab invasion. Mainly, what we do is breed them in the lab - the octopi, I mean - and then release them into the sea to test if they can help to reduce the invasive species. Of course, it's not a solution of the problem because the problem is very big here, but is one more containment control measure that we can use.
RASCOE: And you said that these octopi, though, even though they're helping, they're not going to completely solve the problem.
GENTILE: Yeah. The invasion is very high here in the north part of Italy because here we have the farm of mussel and clams.
RASCOE: Yeah. So what is happening with the fisheries? Are the crabs eating, like, mussels and clams?
GENTILE: Yeah. They eat a lot of mussel and clams. They love to eat them.
RASCOE: So how did these blue crabs get over to Italy?
GENTILE: These blue crabs have arrived in the Mediterranean through ballast water of a commercial ship - the water that helps the balance of the ships - and becames a problem only three years ago. But the first seeing of these - the first views of this crab is more than 10 years ago.
RASCOE: So the blue crabs came along on ships. They kind of hitched a ride.
GENTILE: Yeah. Exactly.
RASCOE: So what's next for your research?
GENTILE: What we need to do in the next few months is monitoring the population. And we do that in two ways. The first one is with the scuba divers that help monitoring the population. But the very efforts is from the local fishermen. They call us if they find octopus.
RASCOE: Do people eat those?
GENTILE: Yes, of course, because octopi - octopus here is very a good dishes. So the people love to eat octopus in Italy.
RASCOE: That's marine biologist Laura Gentile with the University of Bologna. Thank you so much for joining us.
GENTILE: Thank you.
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