green crabs took over New England probably after hitching a ride on trading ships the US government originally imported Carp from Asia to eat algae oh that was huge and pythons that now Slither around the Florida Everglades are The Offspring of exotic pets that escaped every year invasive species cause up to 1.4 trillion dollars worth of damage in places they weren't meant to live that's equal to five percent of the global economy they can ruin crops kill native animals and make people sick so s
ome people have declared war against these pests and they're learning how to make a buck from the Invaders they hunt you taking these animals out we checked out companies around the world cashing in on invasive species [Music] nice oh damn I thought he was gone that's early catching wild Burmese pythons takes serious skills right there right there you see it only 100 people are licensed to capture these snakes in Florida where the invasive best has decimated local wildlife it's not easy Once you
catch crawling up this Levee with a python it's still fighting you feel it they get Tighter and Tighter and sometimes I've almost felt like it could just pop my kneecap they aren't poisonous but they have super strong bodies that they use to squeeze and kill their prey which could be as large as an alligator the only way to try to stop the invasive species from taking over is by catching them one by one oh my God [Music] so who are The Fearless python Hunters making the most out of this Risky B
usiness why is python removal so urgent for Florida and how did they get here in the first place Amy seaweed has got over 400 pythons since she began hunting in 2019. when you see that python it's adrenaline through the roof do you want here somebody grab the tail and I can grab the head sometimes it's an easy grab sometimes it's a battle oh yeah yeah bring that up on this camera here hell yeah you know you just never know what you're going to get so it keeps it very exciting you taught herself
how to skin the animals and often does it at home she uses bull salt to preserve it until she can send it to a Tannery we have to put it on thick enough so it'll uh get in all the little crevices and that is a snack roll in 2019 she developed her own line of python leather turning the skin into bracelets and wristbands I hate that we have to kill them that is the worst part of this job but we do there's no other choice so I've kind of made it my mission to figure out how to use as much of the py
thon as possible so they don't go to waste back in the 1980s snakes were sold as exotic bats they were imported from Southeast Asia and newspaper ads price them at a few hundred dollars then in 1992 dozens of Burmese pythons escaped a breeding facility when Hurricane Andrew hit and their spread has been nearly impossible to control because they have no real Predators here in the Florida Everglades one of the largest Wetlands on the planet the biggest one ever found in Florida was 215 pounds 18 f
eet long and was ready to lay 122 eggs the snakes swallow their prey whole and while they rarely attack humans they're killing all kinds of native animals from small birds to large alligators in 2012 populations of foxes and Martian cottontail rabbits effectively disappeared because of pythons we are finding those animals in their stomach including some endangered species and federally threatened species such as the endangered Key Largo wood rat and the federally threatened wood stork foreign co
ntractors like Peggy and Beth remove about 5 000 pythons a year from the Everglades they start hunting after Sunset because that's when snakes are out searching for prey good evening this is beginning a python survey in Francis s Taylor only licensed python hunters and government officials are allowed to drive through these restricted levees there's virtually no cell service once they enter so they use a satellite radio and if a serious injury were to happen they would need to be airlifted out s
potting a python is hard even with that flashlight I all see a python and it's moving and we'll get in that area and you're looking around and you might as well step on it before you see it I mean it's amazing how well they can camouflage themselves into this still they say this is easy compared to their full-time job grooming dogs we've been in business together for 35 years now and it's a lot of work that job is hard work it makes this look like a cakewalk but it takes patience often they can
hunt all night and still leave empty-handed it's like regular life hours and hours of boredom and then minutes of pure adrenaline python I'm looking for like an opalescent Sheen like a water bottle or a piece of glass the the light will catch the the shine of the the python scanning the environment for other dangers you know there might be an alligator in the water nearby there might be a cottonmouth nearby we followed them on three hunts before they finally spotted a python right there right th
ere you see it then it's all hands on deck snakes on the ground lifting it in the air would scare it it's a battle you've got to wear it out and you know and get it calmed down so you can get it in the bag so you're sweating it's very hot even the smallest python you will be shocked at the strength they're nothing but muscle they're gone Florida's fish and wildlife agency pays Hunters by the hour and by how long a snake is all right almost nine footer is it fifty dollars for the first four feet
and then an additional twenty five dollars for each foot Beyond four feet so like a five foot snake is seventy five dollars but they don't kill the snakes in the wild the state decides whether they'll euthanize the animal later or if it'll be used for research they double bag it and put it inside a lock box I grew up down here so I definitely can see the the impact these pythons have had on the environment Peggy and Beth started hunting five years ago after they participated in the Florida Pytho
n Challenge in 2016. that's a 10-day event that anyone can enter and get a cash prize for catching a snake animal rights groups like Peter have criticized it because they say it allows inexperienced people to go barging about in forests and swamps on a macho mission to kill but the FWC does require participants to take an online course before the hunt she's backing up trying to figure out can I get away from her and biologists like Michaela Spencer say euthanizing the snakes is the only way to c
ontrol the problem we've always had people asking have you thought about rehoming them could we send them back to their native country well you know remember these animals are established in a whole different ecosystem they could have different diseases and things like that so we really can't ship them anywhere else we're not striking is a good sign that she's tiring now got her she works for the FWC and showed us how Hunters can capture the snakes safely the second I had her pinned right behind
that head I reached in and grabbed if she goes around my leg it can be a good example of like why I give her a leg and not my arms she's actually staying relatively calm after captioner probably because that back and forth tired her out but I've got my leg here I'm not sitting on her just to be clear I don't put any weight on a snake and I tell people don't ever sit on them don't put any weight sometimes they'll just put themselves in the bag once you start to feed them in there there we go a l
ittle bit more of a quail all right we'll just feed her in there she goes in here stick that top on since the snakes need to be eradicated some python Hunters are doing what they can to preserve the Legacy they're amazing creatures they're beautiful it's not their fault they're here they're just doing what pythons do Amy says her leather line is her own way of honoring the reptiles this is a skin that has some battle wounds on it some scars on it from the python being in the wild you know it the
y get bitten by alligators they get clawed by bears they get in fights with themselves with each other the cool thing about this is that if if you get a product that is made out of with this scar in it it is the only one like it in the world and this is from the Everglades you know that you're helping the Everglades when you are taking these animals out well I just try to remind myself that for the greater good a lot of natives are going to live I can remove one Python and give dozens of rabbits
a chance at a good life pythons aren't the only thing threatening Florida the mass of seaweed twice the width of the United States is headed for the state's Coastline this summer it's called sargassum it's an eyesore and a human health hazard when it decomposes sargassum releases ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gas which can cause respiratory problems Mexico has been dealing with this wheat for decades but experts say the problem is worsened in recent years likely due to nitrogen from agricultural
waste and deforestation companies there have figured out how to turn the weed into paper bricks or even shoes semana to make paper workers blend seaweed into a paste they use a wooden frame to shape and mold it and hang the final product to dry sarcasm affects the coasts but invasive plants are a problem in fresh water too in Cambodia one company weaves a local medicine to baskets and bags this invasive weed is choking lakes and rivers around the world water hyacinths now clog waterways in over
50 countries including Tom lesapp the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia the people there cannot travel easily when it grows super thick and also the living things under the water die so far Exterminating the plant has proven impossible for the 1.5 million people who live here now locals are removing the pest with their bare hands and giving new life to the dry stems we went to Cambodia to see how local women are making fashionable bags from worldwide waste water Hyacinth is native to th
e Amazon but over the past Century humans helped it spread to places it never should have been it's been transported all over the world because it's beautiful it's an ornamental plant species Dr kit McGowan is an ecologist who studies invasive plants it's native to the upper reaches of the Amazon basin most of the transport occurred during the early 20th century in the Amazon weevils and moths keep the hyacinths in check but without Predators the plants can double in size every two weeks they bl
ock out light and oxygen and kill all kinds of other species that's a big problem for Tom lesapp's floating villages op is on The Villages around there have a rather unique lifestyle the hyacinths creates so much waste that they're harming stocks of staple foods and they make it harder to get around many times we got stuck for a few hours in the middle of the water Hyacinth Lake how soon straw runs rocock a company that hires women to remove the weeds by hand and then weave the stems into basket
s rugs and other handicrafts he says she wanted to help local women earn a living while dealing with the plant that makes their way of life more difficult many women they still live in the circle of grown up and get married in the young age I want them to be employed and to get some training they can bundle as many as 200 Hyacinth stocks at a time they bring them back onto Shore to dry in the Sun for up to two weeks then they wash them well [Music] the women lay the stems out on top of this wood
en platform and steamed the plants over charcoal to kill bacteria and get the right color after the steaming our Weavers would select the size of water Hyacinth stem they use small stems for coasters and medium ones for bags and baskets the largest stems will become rugs our weaving is based on our traditional weaving you can see from our weaving style and also the fabric that we use this one we made for a one of the apartment in simrip one rug can take three women over a month to weave but at b
rocock women can make up to three hundred dollars for a finished product more than what the average Cambodian earns in a month there are millions of people around the world struggling with water hyacinths and they've found all kinds of solutions in Bangladesh locals Farm on top of mats made from the invasive plant mechanical Harvesters on Lake Victoria in Kenya keep the plants in check but they're expensive to operate local entrepreneurs there have found success helping the weeds break down into
biogas for cooking and compost for growing crops in Nigeria a startup similar to rokok also employs women to make handicrafts one thing we have to remember about all of these uses is the they're probably not sustainable so they're only short-term solutions to the problem of this invasive species because if we create an industry using this species then we're going to create a demand for this species back in the States the green crab is called the Cockroach of the sea they've been ravaging marine
ecosystems everywhere from New England to the Pacific Northwest since at least the 1930s and some locals are trying to convince people to eat then drink them like The Distillery New Hampshire it makes crab whiskey Will Robinson uses 80 pounds of green crab to make it has the funk of the crab but the spice prevents that from being harsh and chefs in New England are adding the invasive species to the menu I'm not going to make a crab ice cream yet but I may go that that far more Will's making his
fourth batch of crab trapper for each one he buys roughly a thousand live crabs from a harvester on the New Hampshire Coast these guys I don't work with them Will's been an environmentalist his whole life and loves pushing the boundaries of what can be added to Whiskey part of this why it's made a big story is because of the ick factor in using crab in a spirit but I don't think I've had anybody taste it who was put off by the flavor at all he slowly simmers them for 20 minutes so the Aromas do
n't cook off then he mixes the crab flavored stock with the distilleries housemate spirit in a vacuum still that stays at a low temperature a lot of the flavor molecules and Aroma molecules are very delicate so those would break down if we were to boil them in a in a regular still crab flavor alone isn't very appetizing of eight different spices coriander Mustard Seed Dill seed fresh bay leaf paprika allspice clove and cinnamon that's all combined with the distilleries-based bourbon to form the
final product I didn't drink while I was driving but I kept a small vial in my vehicle so that when I would pull up at a stoplight I could smell it and be like oh yeah no this definitely works will hopes his concoction will Inspire others to get creative with green crabs they don't have a whole lot of meat however if we could create a soft shell crab market for them it would be huge because they have fantastic flavor and that's exactly what Harvesters like Mike Macy are trying to do by catching
and selling as many as he can we do today yeah it's a good start Mike used to teach Marine Science at a local high school now he catches green crabs for a living thanks to Fisheries specialist Gabby brought who came to speak to his class about green crabs we just talked a lot about the abundance of the resource and the quality of the product and it just got to the point where I said someone's got to give this a try Mike had been following the species for years but this is the first season he's h
arvesting them commercially he's one of the few making a tiny dent in a huge population so how many of them are there as many stars as there are in the sky [Laughter] the exact number I can't tell you certainly enough to threaten Maine's 890 million dollar fishing industry back in the 1800s these stowaways probably made their way to the US on trading Ships coming from Europe but no one really noticed until the 1930s when fishermen saw that green crabs were eating all the shellfish females can la
y eggs up to twice a year and produce about 185 000 eggs at a time and they have no predators a pretty decent sized green crab can eat up to 40 mussels a day or 40 soft shell clams a day and they can dig up to eight inches from 1948 to 1958 soft shell clam production in Maine fell by over 80 percent as green crabs became more and more rampant if you have too many of them it's not just your Seafood that goes away it's a lot of your biodiversity and our Marsh habitats like eelgrass Meadows that gr
een crabs damage when they burrow for shelter and dig for prey eelgrass is a plant that can help stabilize some sediment in the bottom of estuaries but more than that it's a fabulous Nursery habitat for commercially important species New England's harsh Winters used to keep crab numbers down but now scientists say warming water is due to climate change are giving them a chance to thrive while there haven't been any major recent studies it's clear they're still wreaking havoc everywhere from New
England to Washington in 2021 the Lummi Nation found more than 70 000 crabs in one 750 acre saltwater Pond over just a few months it was roughly 30 times what they'd caught just a year earlier while there are National strategies in place to tackle other invasive species like Asian carp there isn't one for green crabs but environmentalists and chefs are pushing hard to create a market for harvesting and cooking them and it's starting to catch on Americans don't have a really broad palette for sea
food so introducing a good but New Concept in terms of a culinary ingredient takes a little bit of coaxing in places like Venice soft shell green crabs or moleca are a delicacy Gabby says the challenge in the U.S is getting people to understand that invasive doesn't mean an edible the problem is they're tough shells so the key is to catch them during the tiny window just before they shed their hard shell and grow a new one they're only going to be soft for I mean really paper thin soft for maybe
12 hours Mike has 20 traps throughout this Estuary they did with two small herrings each sometimes the uh seagulls pull the bait bags out one crate alone can catch 40 pounds of green crab overnight that's equivalent to about 400 crabs or enough for a couple hundred bottles of crab whiskey when they come up in the traps they are all going to be hard shells or very recently malted crabs that are of really no use to us except to be sold to the bait Market those only go for about 5 cents each rough
ly 50 times less than what a restaurant worthy crab would bring in that's a freshly molted male freshly molted male and those are all missed opportunities from this spring but Mike has a plan their molting season only lasts about two months males typically molt from May to July while females molt between August and early October they put the ones with the best chance of molting soon into crab condos this one on top being the much larger one is the molted crab and the soft shell and What's Left B
ehind is its discarded carapace this one's looking like a pretty good product it molted with all its legs and claws you can see it's kind of fresh and shiny on the bottom others that won't molt for another two to three weeks are storing crates trapping is still happening at a pretty small scale but it could potentially work between 2010 and 2012 nearly 1 million crabs were removed from an estuary in Nova Scotia eelgrass habitats and soft shell clams slowly made a comeback just south in the coast
al Waters of Maine the goal is the same there's no way that we'll ever be able to eradicate this species the idea is just to bring the population down to a dull Roar and what better way to do that than by convincing people to eat them even though green crabs are one of the most common it's pretty hard to find them on menus and you're not going to be able to go up to any old fish market and find a green crab Mary Parks found at greencrab.org in 2017 to Showcase recipes that might encourage people
to give them a try and remember how crabs lay 185 000 eggs at a time turns out they're pretty tasty if you cook them right you're just going to take your nail and pop off this back of the carapace inside here might not look super appetizing to some but if you scoop with a spoon towards the back of the shell what you'll reveal is this beautiful bright orange row Mary sautes the row for a few minutes with olive oil pepper and white wine then she combines it with sweet corn and garnishes the dish
with dill basil one shallot and chili oil she often buys the crabs online in Frozen three pound packs from Wolf's fish 120 pounds of green crabs are delivered to the warehouse weekly the goal is to get these Critters out of the water and onto plates everyone in the seafood industry is concerned about green crabs and there's a wonderful opportunity to use that abundance and make something delicious at Alcove in Boston the Furlong bisque named after the late Harvester Mike Furlong has been on the
menu for about five years I got a small amount of them and I made the biscuit and it just knocked me out my customers loved it saute them a little bit and then and this is the most important part is you want to just sort of break them open a little bit that's how the dish gets its deep flavor so you can make a bisque with blue crab or Lobster but green crabs actually have exponentially more that dark roasty ocean flavor you really want once it's cooked the soup is Blended pureed and strained thi
s is the finished best hot see it nice and thick and creamy looking but there's no cream in it no Dairy that is until it's garnished with a scoop of mascarpone and then one of my favorite herbs to use for this is chervil it's one of the fine herbs they call it and that's it so far this is his only green crab inspired dish but he doesn't want to stop there they're an invasive species and they're delicious which is a twofer perhaps they've long been a culinary staple but what about lionfish they m
ay be venomous but that doesn't mean you can't eat them with the right preparation they're pretty tasty too Norman's lionfish sold the spiny creatures until it closed down I was opening up a Caribbean restaurant in the Lower East Side of New York City and we wanted to have a hook no pun intended and we wanted to sell an invasive fish lionfish have become the poster child for invasive species in North America they're beautiful but really shouldn't be hanging out in certain parts of the ocean thes
e fish pose a very real threat to marine ecosystems a single lionfish could mean 79 fewer native species in an area lionfish are primarily invading the Atlantic the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and outside their indo-pacific home they have very few Predators they'll eat anything so that's that's one issue that you know we have is if you're looking at some of these reefs they're they're wiping them out and it's just lionfish on the reefs now Ryan Chadwick founded a lionfish Supply Company to
stock his own restaurants we ended up sourcing lionfish ourselves in the Bahamas flying down on the weekends spearing The Fish and bringing it back up in coolers the tricky thing about lionfish is that you have to spear them one at a time they don't live in schools won't bite a hook and traps and Nets can catch more than just lionfish add on the venomous spines and you've got yourself an animal fishermen are reluctant to hunt so how do you make the risk worthwhile you pay them we can pay a littl
e bit more than they would say go out for group or a snapper that makes us happy because they'll go after this fish more than they will for the other fish and there's no season on lionfish so there's no tag limits there's you know it's open season everywhere so you're talking about year-round income for some of these fishermen which is great but paying more for the fishermen means paying more for the fish the price for lionfish has gone up and we understand that and I think people are willing to
pay a little bit more for a fish they know is is potentially saved our our fragile ecosystem but even Chadwick is only cautious most about the effect efforts like his will have I think it's population control I don't think it's eradication I really don't I'd hope it is but I don't think so I think it's worth it for us because we know the end result if we don't do something this fish will consume every single fish in the Atlantic in a matter of time in some parts of Africa locals are also cookin
g up invasives but not to eat in Ethiopia workers in a refugee camp turn a species of Mesquite into biofuel and in Senegal others make bio coal from an invasive wheat called taifa um but now it's being used to cook build homes and create economic opportunities here in Senegal all in a sustainable way taifa became an international problem after the construction of two dams between Senegal and Mauritania in the mid 80s the dams cut off the flow of water and created ideal conditions for the weed to
grow for years both governments tried and failed to find an effective way to eliminate it now locals are trying on their own and with their bare hands as part of a project led by the French NGO Gret the biocol is made by burning taifa in these outdoor Kilns for six hours at a time is chard reeds are mixed with water and rice husks a machine shapes it into briquettes which are then laid out to dry for three to four days taifa briquettes ignite faster and burn longer than wood in rural Senegal mo
re than 80 percent of the population relies on wood for cooking and Heating the pollutants released by wood burning can harm your heart and your lungs typical on the other hand produces much less smoke and the plant can be used for more than just burning taifa can also be mixed with Clay to make bricks for construction many of the people participating in the grep project are women um [Music] amen every month participants turn nearly 30 000 pounds of taifa into biocoal yes although this process c
reates new sources of revenue the weed is still endangering valuable farmland cutting the weed is labor intensive and transportation costs are high it can also be difficult to find buyers but ngos and locals are working to find ways to minimize costs and increase efficiency foreign story from the world wide waste team we want to bring you more stories to take a look at garbage and the creative ways people deal with it if you enjoyed this video please like And subscribe we also read all the comme
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