An army of red monsters is marching west from Russia. They have eight legs,
and huge claws, and they grow up to 6ft wide. They’ll eat anything they can
catch. There are 10 million of them, and they’re multiplying rapidly.
So, I ask you, what better way to spend a short break than to nip up to
Norway, catch a few with your bare hands and eat them with garlic
mayonnaise?
The monsters in question are red king crabs and, while they’re not likely to
put an end to the human race, they’re certainly enough to give it a few
nightmares. They have shells covered in evil spikes and chillingly complex,
insect-like mouth parts, all blown up to outlandish proportions.
They look like something dreamt up by the special-effects department of a film
studio specialising in gratuitously nasty horror B-movies, then rejected by
the director as implausibly unpleasant. I have stared deep into their
stick-mounted eyes from a distance of six inches, and all I saw there was a
dumb, relentless malevolence.
If you’d like to do the same, you need to go to Finnmark, at the very top of
Norway. If you look on the map, it’s that spiky mohican haircut of land that
fans out way, way above the Arctic Circle. Briefly, this is why the crabs
are there: king crabs are native to Kamchatka, 2,500 miles away at the
eastern end of Siberia.
In the 1960s, Soviet scientists brought some to the Arctic Ocean to farm them
for meat (they’re as delicious as they are ugly). With classic Soviet
efficiency, they lost a few. In 1976, one turned up in northern Norway. Now
there are literally millions of them. They’re uninvited, unwelcome and
seemingly unstoppable: some locals claim their voracious appetite for clams,
fish eggs, seaweed and just about anything else is making a desert of the
ocean floor.
While the Norwegian authorities are in a bit of a quandary about the crabs —
some want to wipe them out, others to treat them as a food resource —
enterprising tourist companies aren’t. They’d like you to come up to
Finnmark, sample the delights of the area — and, while you’re at it, do your
bit to thin out the advancing crustacean hordes by taking a crab-catching
trip.
The Norwegians are those nice people who wear funny jumpers and send us a
Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square every year. How could you turn away from
them in their hour of need? Last one on the plane to Finnmark’s a sissy.
ALL OF WHICH (sort of) explains how I come to be in an inflatable boat with a
local diver, Lars Petter Oie, in the middle of the Jarfjord, heaving on a
rope. At the bottom of the rope, 50 yards down, is a trap that may, or may
not, have king crabs in it. And those crabs may, or may not, try to remove
my fingers when they get to the surface.
It’s a lovely place to risk your appendages. The sun set the day before I
arrived, in late November, not to be seen again until the end of January,
but the wild, rocky landscape is far from gloomy. A soft, pinkish light
spreads over the snow-blown tundra and the wide, clear waters of the fjord.
I’m not cold, either — but that’s because I’m wearing a survival suit, a
heavy rubber all-in-one that’s pulled on over your clothes and makes you
look like a big pink Moomin.
()
After a couple of minutes of steady hauling, the trap — a wire cage about the
size of a supermarket trolley — slowly materialises through the water. There
are two crabs in it, each about 2ft across. And there’s a three-footer
hanging on the outside. He could let go any time he wanted, but he’s
clinging on, trying to get at the scraps of fish inside. This is not a smart
move.
Lars Petter and I haul the trap onto the rubber gunwale, and I go for the big
one. It’s really not too difficult: just avoid the claws and grab a back
leg. Then sling the snapping crustacean into the bottom of the boat, and
watch where you put your feet on the way home.
Job done, we head off to snoop around the fjord. And there, crawling up the
sheer rock walls, is another, still bigger crab, about 4ft across. It moves
like an enormous spider, all eight spindly limbs in creepy conjunction,
holding it against the bare rock. It makes you shiver just to look at it.
We edge closer and closer, and still the crab hangs at the water line,
watching our approach. With no natural predators here, they’re arrogantly
unafraid of anything or anyone. I lean at full stretch over the gunwale:
another few inches, and...
I make a grab for a leg. The crab goes ballistic. All snapping claws and
waving limbs, he’s a lot livelier than his mates in the trap. For an awkward
few seconds, it’s an even bet whether we’ll end up in the boat or the water
(which is about 0C, by the way), with a side wager on whether I can duck the
four-inch claw that is currently snapping at my nose.
Our eyes meet — his on long stalks, mine bulging out to meet them with the
effort — and the look we exchange is of pure, animal hatred. It’s him or me,
and we both know it.
With a grunt, a roll and a heave, I sling him into the bottom of the boat,
where he scuttles around furiously, trying and failing to get a claw grip on
our chunky boots. We make a speedy about-turn, rev up the twin outboards and
head back to Lars Petter’s shoreline hut. It’s lunchtime.
THE BEST cooking method for monster crab is simple: boil for 10-15 minutes,
then serve the legs (the body’s not good eating) with bread and garlic
mayonnaise. Before any go into the pot, however, we have a good look at
their bellies to check their sex. Through legislative insanity, it’s
forbidden to take females, despite the fact that each will produce about
half a million eggs a year: only 2% survive, but that’s still an awful lot
of crabs. No wonder there’s a plague of them.
Sure enough, one has female markings. She’ll have to go back in the water.
Before returning her to the fjord, though, Anton, Lars Petter’s Russian
assistant, holds her up, lifts the undershell a little, and there they are:
a black mass of eggs.
“You try,” says Anton. “Very fresh.” The crabs may be a menace, but eating a
mother’s babies while she watches seems a bit much. On the other hand, she’s
got 500,000 of them. She can spare a few. I follow Anton’s example and scoop
out a fingerful, but turn away discreetly while I munch. They’re lovely —
less salty than caviar, somehow clean-tasting. And as he says, very, very
fresh.
The other crabs are delicious too, incidentally: like lobster, but more
tender. I manage two legs and a claw, and I’m full to bursting.
Scientists think the crabs are expanding their range at about 30 miles a year.
At that rate, it will take them about 50 years to reach Scarborough. Plenty
of time, you might think: but mark my words, unless we do something to halt
their inexorable march, the rock pools of Britain won’t be safe for our
grandchildren. When little Johnny goes crabbing, forget the hand net: you’ll
have to kit him out with a flame-thrower, like Sigourney Weaver in Alien.
Admittedly, three crabs and a few eggs aren’t going to stop the monster hordes
in their spidery tracks, but I like to think I’ve done my bit. The message
to patriotic holidaymakers is clear: head north, heave up those traps, and
munch for Britain. Do your bit to fight the red onslaught. Your stomach will
thank you for it.
Stephen Bleach was a guest of Innovation Norway
Travel brief: Specialised Tours (01342 712785,
www.specialisedtours.com) has three nights at Kirkenes, in Finnmark, from
£875pp, B&B, including a trip to catch king crabs, husky sledging,
a snowmobile tour and flights from Heathrow with SAS via Oslo. Or try
Discover the World (01737 218800, www.discover-the-world.co.uk).
