Chinese Mitten Crabs in the Thames

Chinese mitten crabs are infesting Britain's waterways – yet in south-east Asia, they're a delicacy. So shouldn't we be eating them? Richard Sharp goes fishing

I didn't believe that the Thames had the power to cause hallucinations until one day its banks started to wriggle and writhe in front of me, as if taking on an undulating life of their own. From out of nowhere, eight hairy legs crawled along the mud banks and drunkenly staggered sideways towards the water. Yet more crabs followed. Feeling a little like the lead actor in an improbable 1950s B-movie (Killer Crabs Eat Tower Bridge!), I ran off along the embankment to warn friends and family of the invasion.

Then a friend explained that what I had most likely seen were some of the Chinese mitten crabs that have colonized the Thames for the last 100 years in their tens of thousands. They get their mitten name from the furry cuffs that surround each claw and while their name is cute and conjures up images of grannies knitting booties, they are environmental hooligans, destroying local freshwater species such as native crayfish and collapsing natural river banks by digging deep burrows into the mud.

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