The world demand for the softshell, which is nearlyġ00% female crabs, has increased steadily and marketedly. The expansion of the market for softshell crab has been emphasized with a coinciding increase in crab shedding systems used to take advantage of the softshell market. Over the last five years the market has had to compete with a large increase in imports of crabmeat In Maryland, 60% of commercial watermen's fishing income came from the blue crab harvest. Crabmeat production occurs in approximately 44 processing plants along the Chesapeake Bay area. Combined Maryland and Virginia dockside harvest for the year 2000 being $50.4 million, while the lowest catch in 20 years, weighed in at 50.9 million pounds. Employing over 1,200 workers, and in 1999 produced sales volume estimated at $30.3 million. In Maryland the blue crab has been the dominant contributor to the seafood harvesting and processing industry. Female Blue Crabs and Male Blue Crabs and
Females have well-developed swimmerets than males do.Depletion of the blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay can be explained by the crabbing policies of Maryland and Virginia. Abdomen is larger in females than in males. The genital openings are located closer in males than in females. The first two pairs of legs in mature males are longer than in females. Males have more conspicuous claws than females do. Males are larger and longer than females are. What is the difference between Male and Female Crayfish? The ability of females to carry a large number of eggs is facilitated with a large abdomen and well-developed swimmerets. Usually, a female crayfish is capable of carrying about 200 eggs at one, but there are recorded instances with females carrying more than 800 eggs at once. After the copulation with a male, the swimmerets of the female on the ventral side of the abdomen become heavy with clutches of eggs. The external openings are small and locate slightly away from each other. The reproductive system is mainly composed of an ovary with three lobes, and it leads to the exterior through the oviduct. Being females, the presence of female reproductive system is obvious. Their abdomen is usually small, and the legs (also known as swimmerets) are not very well developed, as the males would not have carry eggs with them.įemale crayfish are generally smaller than the males, but the other features appear to be more conspicuous than males. However, those long and tubular legs could be prominently seen in sexually mature crayfish males. It would be important to notice two pairs of long and tubular legs, usually the first two pairs. There are two tubules of the vas deference, and it leads to the exterior at the genital openings. There are three lobes in the internal testis to produce spermatozoa. The most obvious feature of the males is the male reproductive system, which opens through a pair of small genital openings on the abdomen. However, the males and females of crayfish differ from each other in many ways such as body size, genitals, and the legs or swimmerets.Īmong most of the crayfish species, males have the larger and most conspicuous body among females. They are a group of crustaceans they also have hard shells and claws to protect themselves, yet there are crayfish characteristics to make them unique among all crustaceans. It would be interesting to notice that there is a pronounced difference between families of Southern and Northern hemisphere crawdads, which is the absence of the first pair of pleopods in the Southern hemisphere family.Ĭrayfish are also known as crawfish or crawdads depending on the location. The Madagascan species and Australian species are endemic to those regions, and it would be important to know that there are more than 100 species distributed in Australia. 
There are seven species is two genera in Europe while the Japanese species is endemic to the region. These animals have been classified under three taxonomic families and two of which are distributed in the northern hemisphere with the highest diversity in the North America (more than 330 species in nine genera). They have been used as pets in many aquaria. They are a popular food source across the world including China, Australia, Spain, United States, and many other countries. People have been using crayfish as bait for fishing. Crayfish are prehistoric animals, as their earliest fossils found from Australia could date back to 115 million years from today, but the other fossil records are only 30 million years old.
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