Our finest crab meat, processed by the Crab Shed Salcombe team here on the quayside, has long been a favourite for retail customers, both in person and online. So it is with a heavy heart that we are being forced to temporarily halt our Crab@home sales. The reason? No less than an invasion of octopuses.
This year has seen a massive surge in octopus numbers along our coast. Fishermen are hauling up record catches — not of crab or lobster, but octopus. A marine heatwave is thought to be behind this unusual migration from the octopuses' usual hunting grounds far to the south, off the Moroccan shore.
Octopuses are highly intelligent predators. Crab is one of their top choices and they're getting into crab pots and devouring the contents before the fishers can retrieve them. This has led to dramatic drops in crab landings, and so we simply do not have the quantity of crab meat we need to supply retail sales as well as the Crab Shed Salcombe restaurant.
So please accept our apologies for now - we will of course bring back crab sales as soon as the balance returns to our coastal waters and local crab stocks and fishers have the time needed to recover from this unexpected invasion. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.
