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My erstwhile boating partner was the French owner of a French restaurant in Swindon . He worked out that Christchurch is only two bus rides away from Swindon via Salisbury. So he was sent with his mother on a bus trip to Mudeford crabbing. “But don’t put them back; they make a wonderful soup” But on the way back his carrier bags full of crabs, of course, fell over. Mayhem soon ensued as they scuttled off under the seats and among the other passengers!

This was an old Rick Stein recipe. Many years ago I had a house on the river at Christchurch. One summer day I sent my bored young teenage sons off in the dinghy to get me ten shore crabs to make a crab bisque, incentivised by a 10p per crab reward (pre three decades of inflation) they were gone much longer than expected…….and I was beginning to get anxious……when they both returned safely with 440 shore crabs! but the soup was rich and plentiful, if a bit more expensive than expected.

Thunder Cats. People in their 40's will understand. Steve's a big fan of the Thunder Cats so I made him a coffee table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yow49mPIfk

Created a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzOdxsNKehg

As we grapple with red signal crayfish and grey squirrels from the USA….it’s funny to read that the Eastern seaboard of America is facing an invasion of green shore crabs. It seems boats and their ballast tanks are responsible…and now our little shore crabs are upsetting their shellfish industry.! One approach to tackle it is trying to encourage people in the US to eat them! Trouble is it would take all day to extract a thimble of crabmeat! …but it is nice! The other approach is to make a’broth’ as they call it. I prefer ..bisque. This I can recommend…. go crabbing and don’t put them back….boil for a few mins in seawater…they go bright red. Crunch them up / blitz….and cook for a while with onion, carrot, celery, wine and a tin of tomato. a bit more blitzing and pass through a sieve reduce a bit…a splash of cream and serve with crusty bread. Yum!

I thought I'd seen that they were deadly poisonous, Hence the name.

Jim....those are the gills...not toxic, just as inedible as feathers on birds; they get sieved out with the shell.