Declawing of crabs

Crabs commonly have the ability to regenerate lost limbs after a period of time, and thus declawing is viewed as a potentially more sustainable method of fishing.

[1] Due to the time it takes for a crab to regrow lost limbs, however, whether or not the practice represents truly sustainable fishing is still a point of scientific inquiry, and the ethics of declawing are also subject to debates over pain in crustaceans.

[2] Declawing is a controversial practice; some jurisdictions have banned it partially or completely, while others only allow the crab's claws to be harvested commercially.

In an experiment using commercial techniques, 47% of Florida stone crabs that had both claws removed died after declawing, as did 28% of single-claw amputees.

[8]: 205 Additionally, declawed crabs show significantly lower activity levels than negative controls, and may have difficulties attracting mates.

[14] Yet claws are a large portion of a crab's biomass, ranging from 20% to over 50% of some species' total weight, and thus regeneration can be highly energy- and time-consuming.

[8]: 207  The empirical occurrence of regenerated claws in fishery harvests is low, with studies on stone crabs calculating from less than 10% (Davis et al., 1978),[3] to 13% (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 2011).