Jeremy Miller, an environmental scientist with the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, a coastal research center in Wells, and Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology who has done research on Freeport’s clam flats for two years, both want the same thing: a means to protect soft-shell clams and the ocean environment from green crabs.

Miller is studying the invasive green crabs, which feed on the clams, by trapping them and taking core samples out of southern Maine salt marshes in an attempt to determine how the creatures impact the marshes through burrowing, thereby creating erosion. Beal and his Downeast Institute team have been conducting experiments along the shores of the Harraseeket River since the spring of 2014, looking for ways to control the predators.

Though their work doesn’t necessarily coincide, both Miller and Beal see the development of a market for green crabs as one means of combating their numbers.

“Lobster bait is already one market,” Miller said last week. “But lobstermen want them market ready.”

As part of a series of talks, L.L. Bean invited Miller to make a presentation in Freeport on July 17, showing videos of invasive green crabs and offering a few ideas on what to do about them. The seafood industry, Miller said, has shown some interest in crabs that Wells Reserve researchers trap.

Wells Reserve captured more than 12,000 green crabs last summer in Wells, Yarmouth and Damariscotta. Most of them were found in a big sandbar in Wells.

“Green crabs are not going anywhere,” Miller said. “We need to manage them or find a market.”

Aquaculture would be another means of protecting the soft shell clam resource.

“You can seed clam flats,” Miller said. “There needs to be some attention to this from the state of Maine. Freeport has put in some money, and we need more towns to get into this kind of management.”

Freeport funded a $100,000 study for Beal and his Downeast Institute staff, as well as local clammers, to conduct studies along the flats of the Harraseeket two years ago. Beal and his crew have been back in Freeport since April, thanks to a $200,000 University of Maine grant. They are trapping crabs to study their growth and gender, growing baby clams in barrels called upwellers, using fencing in an attempt to protect clams from green crabs and seeding clams under netting to protect them from the predator.

Clamdiggers and others in the fishing industry report they’re seeing fewer green crabs this summer, especially egg-bearing females and larger crabs. But Miller is convinced they’re not going away, and Beal is taking nothing for granted, either.

“Right now there’s not a lot of clams in Freeport,” Beal said. “We’re trying to keep green crabs at bay. There’s two ways of doing it. You can do netting and you can do that by trapping. The trapping isn’t quite as effective. You have to have an economic incentive for people to trap green crabs. Until you have a market, that’s quite an expense. You need gear, traps, bait, a boat and your time.”

Beal said that the market is paying 25-50 cents a pound for green crabs, which go into pet food. That’s not enough for the harvester, he said.

“A dollar a pound could do it if you have enough crabs,” Beal said. “You need price and product. Those two things have to come together to make a fishery.”

Beal said that many of the large crabs along the Harraseeket have disappeared.

“There are many smaller ones the size of a silver dollar or more. You need bigger ones,” he said.

What about green crabs for human consumption?

“The meat is delicious,” Beal said. “The trouble is, there’s not a lot of meat per crab.”

Chad Coffin, president of the Maine Clammers Association, said that a market for green crabs could provide needed income for some people.

“My concern is that marine resource managers and stakeholders are looking at the green-crab market as a way to produce measurably positive impact on commercially and/or ecologically important marine species,” Coffin said. “The science points to the fact that green crabs are a permanent part of Maine’s marine environment and are a species who possess the reproductive capabilities that will allow their populations to dramatically expand in warming ocean waters regardless of mortality associated with human intervention.”

Beal and his crew – which includes Coffin – conducted seven weeks of field experiments at 20 sites along the Harraseeket River, Winslow Park, Little River and Staples Cove. In one, they placed a series of four nets at 10 sites, 110 yards apart on both sides of the river. They planted clams underneath the nets, looking for the rate of growth and survival.

“Last year, only one side of the river had growth,” Beal said.

The team also planted clams in small wooden boxes filled with mud and covered with nets in another attempt to gauge survival from predation. In addition, they are continuing to trap green crabs and collect data every four days. The Downeast Institute maintains an upweller near the town wharf in South Freeport – a submerged barrel in which baby clams are protected and fed until they grow and can be seeded beneath nets.

“One of the things we’re finding is that it is certainly possible to collect wild clam seed,” Beal said. “The netting really enhances the recruitment of wild clams.”

The Downeast Institute, headed by Brian Beal, maintains a shellfish nursery at a dock near the town wharf in South Freeport. The upweller, as it is called, is a large barrel placed in the water in which baby clams grow. When the clams grow, Beal and his team plant them in the Harraseeket River clam flats. Staff photo by Larry Grard