Warren Graybill is looking for a way to turn the burgeoning local population of European green crabs from bane to boon.

The invasive crab continues to decimate coastal softshell clam stocks and has shellfish diggers, who fear for their livelihood, growing increasingly desperate.

A former shellfish digger and now the owner of Long Reach Seafood on Bath Road, Graybill is trying to develop markets for the crab, whether as a paste that can be added to other seafood products or as whole or processed bait for other fisheries. He’s been hounding dealers and seafood processers on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, looking for anyone with ideas of how to repurpose the alien pests.

Meanwhile, local diggers are trying to organize methods of eradicating the European green crab to save the clamming industry. However, they’re starting at somewhat of a biological and bureaucratic disadvantage: The crabs reproduce much faster than the clammers can collect them, and their habitat in the intertidal zone complicates eradication and diversion efforts because it involves the Army Corps of Engineers.

The ACOE has to approve any apparatus placed in the intertidal zone because it could interfere with endangered marine species. But the approval process takes time, and clammers worry theirs is running out.

“They can be used as bait to catch black sea bass, but it’s kind of a (niche) recreational market,” Graybill said.

Maine’s not the only state dealing with the green crab invasion. They’re becoming — or already have become — a serious problem the entire length of the eastern seaboard that is wreaking devastation on shellfish from oysters to clams, and on the marine habitat as well.

The crabs also like to eat the roots of marine grasses, which causes massive die-offs and, eventually, beach and soil erosion which amplifies storm surge problems for land dwellers.

Other seafood dealers in the northeast have tried to cultivate markets for the crabs, but with modest and mixed success, Graybill said.

Used primarily as bait for other carnivorous creatures and sportfish, the crabs are selling in the northern mid- Atlantic region for about $15 per bushel. That’s not enough to justify paying to ship or transport them a significant distance for sales, Graybill said.

“I’d love for them to be about $100 a bushel,” he said, “because if they were, there’d be guys out there who’d go get ’em. But if they’re not (lucrative enough), into the compost is where they’ll go.”

Gary Brooks, who owns Brooks Feed and Farm on Union Street, has been composting what crabs the diggers bring back from the flats.

Brunswick digger Chris Green has studied the crabs’ infestation and spent “tons of money” on trapping them and finding different ways to eradicate them. He has invested hundreds of dollars in traps and bait, as well as hours of labor to learn about the aggressive, rapidly-reproducing alien pest.

“Just in the areas where I’ve been digging, I’ve seen at least a 50-percent drop in the clam population in the last couple of years,” Green said. “These guys (other diggers) have got to realize that we’re in trouble, we’re in plain trouble.”

A conservation day is scheduled for Sept. 15 at Thomas Point Beach to collect, kill and dispose of as many green crabs as the diggers can find. A previous effort there yielded more than 300 pounds of crabs, which were crushed and buried for compost.

To maintain their license eligibility, state law requires shellfish diggers to contribute a certain number of hours and volunteer labor to resource conservation each year.

Freeport already has begun to address its crab problem, allocating funding for an experimental tidal fencing system to keep seed clams in and green crabs out. Clams and crabs are believed to most frequently interact in the intertidal zone – the part of the beach that is covered by water at high tide but left exposed at low tide.

Led by Darcy Couture, who owns Brunswick-based Resources Access LLC, Freeport began its program in March. But due to its intertidal location, the program had to be reviewed by the Army Corps of Engineers, which delayed its implementation for four months.

An identical fencing solution worked during the 1950s when a similar green crab population spike threatened local clam populations. A succession of colder-than-average winters in the early 1960s also helped to stem the crabs’ proliferation.

However, recent warmer winter weather has played a double role in the clams’ current decline.

Green crabs can tolerate a wide range of temperature and environmental conditions. But warm winters without much snow also have left clam beds open for yearround harvesting by humans, too, because every clam dug in January is one fewer to be found in July.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com