Environment Forum

Former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin played a distant role in causing a stench from hundreds of rotting crabs dumped around Norway’s parliament in Oslo.

It was under Stalin that the king crabs — some spanning more than a metre from claw to claw – were brought to the north-western Soviet Union from their natural habitat in the Pacific Ocean as a new source of food during the Cold War.

For some unexplained reason the crabs had a population explosion in the 1990s and are now advancing west along the Arctic coast of Norway — and no one knows where they will stop.

Environmental group Greenpeace say the crabs are taking over the seabed and threaten other species.

Greenpeace staged a protest outside the Norwegian parliament with decaying crabs, saying that Norwegian fishermen hundreds of kilometres west of the Russian border were getting crabs tangled in their nets — many of them too small to be sold for their meat. The stench of the crabs — caught a month ago — filled the city centre.

The crab meat tastes great – when fresh — but is an expensive delicacy.

“Norway has to do more to stop the advance of the crabs,” said Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace. “The fishermen should get a bounty for every crab they deliver. As it is now the smaller crabs are worthless.”

The crabs are one of many “alien” or “invasive” species that have got a foothold far from their original habitat — like rabbits in Australia, or zebra mussels in the Great Lakes of North America.

Experts say it is almost impossible to eradicate “alien” species like the crabs.

Any good ideas about how to get rid of them?