Appetizing Ads Aim to Serve, Protect Crabs

The latest public education campaign from the Chesapeake Bay Program promotes awareness of the need to save the bay’s famous blue crabs -- in order to eat them.

One television ad begins with water running down a storm drain as a narrator warns that spring rains can carry excess fertilizer into sewers and rivers to the bay, causing crabs to “suffocate slowly from lack of oxygen.”

Then a crab fills the screen, lying still as waves wash over it. “No crab should die like this,” the announcer says.

“They should perish in some hot, tasty, melted butter,” he continues, dipping a morsel of crabmeat into a bowl and eating it.

The television spots, billboards and print ads, targeting the taste buds of diners throughout the Washington area, began this month and will run until mid-April. Each ad in the $620,000 campaign -- which encourages, for the sake of the crustaceans, waiting until fall to fertilize lawns -- emphasizes the bay’s primary role as the source of seafood for the region. The crabs’ mating season is from May to October.

With the slogan “Save the Crabs ... Then Eat ‘Em,” the campaign packs an unexpected punch from an organization whose typical news releases are about cleanups or dam removals.

“The bay really begins in our backyards, and that’s why we’re trying to reach people on their home turfs,” said Christopher Conner, a spokesman for the Chesapeake Bay Program, which is part of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“For many people in Washington, the only time they get to experience the bay is when they sit down at a restaurant. We want them to realize that what they’re having comes from Chesapeake Bay,” he said.

Recent blue crab harvests are well below the long-term average of 73 million pounds a year, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program -- in part because the crab’s habitat is being destroyed by the chemicals in fertilizers. In 2003, the program’s statistics indicate, the harvest declined to about 48 million pounds, close to a historic low.

Judy Landers, who is managing the Chesapeake education campaign, says it isn’t a “hug-a-tree, save-a-whale” environmental promotion.

“Our campaign emphasizes that [local residents] can have healthy, attractive lawns while helping to protect the bay and its wonderful seafood,” Landers said.

“And we’re giving them a good excuse to procrastinate” on some yard work, she added.

As a solution for those who insist on fertilizing their lawns this spring, the program offers a list of lawn service professionals who have the equipment and training to care for lawns the bay-friendly way.

Chris Forth, regional technical manager for TruGreen ChemLawn, said his company strictly limited the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus in its fertilizer. When the fertilizer is applied, he said, his employees make sure it is well-absorbed into the lawn so there is no runoff that will end up in the streams and rivers that empty into the bay.

Excess amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus contribute to the loss of the blue crab’s habitat by stimulating the overgrowth of algae and other plant life. That blocks sunlight from reaching the underwater grasses that provide crabs with shelter, food and nesting areas.

Too much algae also reduces the levels of dissolved oxygen in the deeper waters of the bay, forcing crabs from their preferred habitats and killing smaller organisms on which the crabs feed.

Wayne Bridges, manager of the Crab Claw restaurant in St. Michaels, Md., on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, is grateful that the public is taking an interest in helping the bay -- and in eating the region’s sweet-tasting crab.

“It’s just an ongoing problem, and it’s good to see that somebody’s taking a little action,” he said.

Conner said his organization found in a recent survey that although 90% of people living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed area were concerned about pollution in the bay, few knew they could make a difference.

The Chesapeake Bay Program has been trying for 20 years to move the public to action and hopes that humorous ads -- one notes that “no appetizers were injured in the making of this lawn” -- and partnerships with restaurants will stir more than the consumer’s stomach.

“It’s a lighter approach to a serious issue,” Conner said. “It’s about getting people engaged, reaching them through their seafood.”

Not everyone is a fan of the ads.

Karin Robertson, head of the Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk, Va., said that although promoting awareness about pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay was a worthy cause, promoting the consumption of fish was wrong -- not only because of animal cruelty issues, but because of contaminants, such as mercury and lead, in aquatic life.

“It’s simply not safe for people to consume fish,” she said.

Gary Waugh, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, said one purpose of the ads was to get more people involved in the restoration of the bay.

“We’ve been trying to pull together some campaign that reaches those folks, but when you start talking to people about algae blooms, you kind of just see their eyes glaze over,” he said.

Despite a warm reception to the campaign, Waugh isn’t expecting a complete change in behavior. But he is optimistic.

“This needs to be something that can be ongoing,” he said. “We’re hoping to see some change that will warrant us trying to move forward with this.”