John Hagan is president of Manomet, a highly-respected nonprofit headquartered in Plymouth MA, with many projects in sustainability and ecology. Hagan’s experiences with soft-shell clams lead him to realize the threat that green crabs pose. John lives in mid-coast Maine and works with activists there, including Marissa McMahan and Jonathan Taggart of this group.

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Sophie St.-Hilaire, Ph.D., of U. of Prince Edward Island, Canada was the first North American (that we know of, anyway) to travel to Venice, Italy to study soft-shell green crab production there. Sophie discovered that a combination of three factors signaled a pre-molt crab. The most dramatic is a pair of thin adjacent lines, grey next to white, around the edges of the platelets on their undersides. An advisor to this project, Sophie has had an 80% molting success rate from pre-molts that she selected. 

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Alyssa Novak, Ph.D., Boston University, coastal ecologist and assistant professor at Boston University School of Earth & Environment. She leads a multi-year study of green crab populations in Essex County, Massachusetts; trapping green crabs; and directing an effort to transplant eelgrass to mitigate green crabs' destructive environmental effects.​ 

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Marissa McMahan, Ph.D. candidate, Northeastern University. From a lobstering family in mid-coast Maine, she currently does research on the impact of climate change on the distribution and abundance of marine species. She and John Hagan have applied for a Saltonstall-Kennedy grant for green crab research and, needless to say, we hope they get it.

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Peter Phippen is the Coastal Coordinator, Upper North Shore, for the Massachusetts Bay National Estuary Project. Peter has multiple projects for salt marsh restoration. The crabs he traps are donated, under state permit, to wholesalers and chefs to help expand the culinary market for green crabs. He coordinates policy with Massachusetts state governmental officials. and works extensively with Alyssa Novak.

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Jonathan Taggart has a background in fine arts restoration but is an activist on the green crab front. He lives in Georgetown, Maine, in the mid-coast region, where the crabs are common. On a professional trip to Venice, Italy, he took time out to scout the centuries-old artisanal industry of creating soft-shell green crabs for the gourmet market, as Sophie st.-Hilaire had done earlier. Jonathan persuaded an expert from the Venetian green crab fishery, Paolo Tagliapietro, to travel to New England to share his skills. Jonathan works extensively with Marissa McMahon in trapping and monitoring, and is the star lecturer of the Green Crab R & group. 

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Kevin Cheung is a biologist and aquaculture expert with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's fish hatchery in North Attleboro MA. He is also, in his free time, a commercial fisherman. Kevin brings to the green crab effort a wide and deep understanding of marine species, as well as hands-on skills with the equipment used in hatcheries and aquaculture operations. 

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Gabrielle Beaulieu is Project Coordinator for Coastal Restoration, Parks Canada, in Nova Scotia. Her group has been involved with green crabs for eight years and has data and information they are willing to share. Her group has done research on innovative trap designs, and like the rest of us they are looking for commercial uses for green crabs, to give trappers financial incentives to keep putting pressure on green crab populations.

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Roger Warner is a journalist, writer, and activist living on the edge of salt marsh in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Roger wrote the breakthrough cover story of the green crab ecological crisis and its potential for the culinary food industry for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. As the project coordinator, he is also in charge of publicizing the efforts of this grassroots team to TV and print outlets, and thus ultimately growing the consumer demand. Warner has also set up relationships with Massachusetts seafood wholesalers distributing green crabs throughout the U.S. Northeast and seeking to expand domestically and abroad.

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Mary Parks is the environmental compliance and data manager for Red's Best, a seafood company and Dayboat cooperative operating out of Boston MA. As a graduate of Colby College, she has taken on key roles in hosting green crab culinary events at the Boston Public Market, and is running our Facebook and Instagram digital initiatives.

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Heather Atwood is a Gloucester-based cookbook author and food blogger with a special interest in the livelihoods of fishing communities, and the new kinds of seafood available from the changing oceans. 

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