From Kent Narrows to the Po Delta: one crab, two very different stories
I live near Kent Narrows, Maryland—but I’m from Emilia-Romagna, where the Po River fans into the Adriatic. In both places, water shapes identity and work. Yet the same species tells two opposite stories. Here in the Chesapeake, the blue crab is a heritage fishery struggling through one of its lowest population counts on record. Back home, that same crab has become an invasive predator devouring clams and mussels, threatening a hundred-million-euro industry.
This shared fate captures what I work on every day: how markets and ecosystems intertwine. The solutions that help watermen in Maryland—responsible aquaculture, demand for invasives, better habitat data—are the same tools that could turn crisis into opportunity in the Po Delta. Two estuaries, one crab, and a reminder that economic recovery and ecological balance are the same story told in different tides.
Mnemba’s Fishing Communities: Holding on to a Changing Sea
As the sun rises over Mnemba, Mozambique, fishermen prepare their boats while women wade through the shallows, searching for shellfish. The sea has always provided, but now, the fish are fewer, the reefs quieter. Illegal fishing and environmental changes have left their mark, yet the community persists—casting nets, weaving baskets, and diving for octopus in the seagrass beds. Their connection to the ocean is unbreakable, but for how much longer?