Bali Expat Forum - Bali Travel Forum

Indonesia has a healthy crab population, I suppose its mainly for export? What variety can you find or trap there? Bet there are some whoppers around the gilli islands fast moving waters? Never really saw any on the menus, I do recall back in the early 90's buying fresh huge cooked crab, cheap!

In Makassar there is a whole chain of restaraunts devoted to crab. Absolutely delicious and packed out every night.

Let me guess this is going to be one of your schemes

HAhaha Jimbo, you know me toooooooo well, hahaha no I just do it as a hobby here, if I come back over I was just wondering what species the local waters have for trapping, yum yum,, and I did a search and actually found nothing about crabs or crabbing! amazing! Hey better than packing in a excavator for digging Gold,, hahaha...... What about lobsters, I guess I will google area species, its difficult to find any info on local fishing or trapping... Frog

Hi Frog,

Bewdy, a topic I can really sink my teeth into as a fisheries biologist and frequent scourer of fish markets while I'm in Indo!

The main species of crabs I've seen over there is what we call in Oz by the common name of Green Mud crab (Scylla serrata) which are found in mangrove areas and like to bury in the mud of said areas. They get very, very big and we have plagues of them here in Oz to in our northern regions. Sadly, I doubt the population is really that healthy, certainly not in the Java/Bali/Lombok regions as their is really little or no fisheries regulation in these areas and the mangrove forests are in a hideous state if they remain at all, a lot of them have been ripped out for development and the creation of aquaculture industries. I don't know for certain, but I'm guessing that a lot of the crabs seen at the markets and restaurants in these areas actually come from farms nowdays. Back in 1999 I spent a bit of time in north Bali as part of a Uni trip and we were trying to 'crack' the life cycle of mud crabs to initiate the farming of these suckers, they could well have done it as most of the crabs I've seen seem to be a fairly uniform size and in reality quite small for wild caught crabs (Well under what we would call legal size here in WA). I doubt there is much of an export market, I can't imagine the price would allow for it as crabs don't generally get that good a price in international markets, certainly nothing like lobsters and shrimp (or what we call prawns here in Oz) and should be transported live (as crabs don't freeze well like lobsters or shrimp) which is expensive to do. Our shallow water crab fisheries here in Oz are almost solely for domestic markets

The other crabs I've noticed in relatively good numbers is the Blue Swimmer crab (Portunus pelagicus) or what West Ozzies know as Blue Manna crabs and Asians call the Flower crab and similar to the Blue crab that you have over there in the US (and use for soft shell crab, I believe?). These are the blue, flat backed suckers with slimmer claws. They come from sandy and muddy bottoms and aren't tolerant to leaving the water like Mud crabs. They are a lot fiddlier to eat than Mud crabs but a lot sweeter on the palate. There are a whole heap of other species that I have noticed but won't bore you with the details, Indonesians don't seem to be particularly fussy about the size of the crabs they eat (or any other seafood for that matter) so that brings into play a whole heap more varieties than what we would normally eat in western countries. Interestingly, some species of colourful tropical coral reef crabs are toxic and I have noticed some of these species for sale at our big fishmarket in Java, near Banyuwangi . Heaven help the poor sucker that buys them, a day or two of magic mushroom-esque hallucinations ahead ha ha ha! As a rule of thumb for Indo, only eat crabs that have rounded 'swimmerets' as their last pair of legs (opposite end to the nasty bitey bits).

My bride is a big fan of crabs so one of her first excursions when she arrived here in West Oz (she's been here 3 weeks now) was going crabbing. We collected 20 nice big suckers easily and she's been eating crab all week! She certainly doesn't want to return to Indo anytime soon and it's not even lobster season yet! In the mean time she's got a freezer full of fish, prawns and scallops to munch through, poor bugger.........

Cheers
Adam

And as for the Lobsters in Bali, I really think they're in worse state than the crabs! The lobsters you find over there are all tropical Rock Lobsters, mainly being Ornate Rock lobsters (Panulirus versicolor), Painted Rock lobsters (Panulirus ornatus and Two-Spined Rock lobsters (Panulirus pencillatus) (and I'm not adding the Latin names to sound like a smartarse but if you want to do a web search you'll get better info using them). None of these species enter traps readily so are solely taken by diving. Tropical lobsters are inferior in quality to temperate and cold water lobbies, but don't taste too bad if handled and cooked correctly. Here again, the fisheries regulation in Bali and Indo in general sucks and it is quite easy to find WAY to small lobbies and spawning females for sale in the fish markets. I'm guessing the majority of lobbies in Bali probably come from further afield islands in the archipelago. Better off buying an American lobster IMHO Frog, better quality and more likely to be harvested in a sustainable manner.

Adam

Wow, now thats an answer to a forum post, thanks... Too bad the regulations are not followed or in place, the waters around the area are perfect for these species, I have read reports that they are way overfished, shame............... guess I will have to enjoy the sweet stone crabs I catch for now,,,,,,, but I do like tropical lobsters..... Frog

No worries, better to be searching for answers to "Crabs" of the clawed variety than "Crabs" of the Sanur variety

I was in the market yesterday. Shell on Crabs were 3570 Rp per 4 ounces and vey small with green in colour

Hi Jimbo,

Sounds to me they'd be Green Mud Crabs (have they got relatively big round claws?) and sadly small ones at that. Does Sulawesi have many mangrove forests? If it does I'm guessing they've probably been wild harvested too which makes it even sadder. Muddies don't sexually mature until they're about 14cm across the back of the shell so really they shouldn't be taken below 15cm. Seeing as they get to about 3 kilos in weight, it's a shame they don't leave em a bit longer to grow up.

Most of the crabs I see here for sale in local fish markets and expensive supermarkets are tiny. Not "most"...all of them.
Then again, I've seen some reasonably sized ones in sea-side restaurants. Maybe they're not from Bali or the restaurants snapped them up before I got there.
Thinking about it, I haven't eaten a decent crab here in more than ten years. I'm no marine biologist but if anything, the crabs just seem to get smaller every week.

...No worries, better to be searching for answers to "Crabs" of the clawed variety than "Crabs" of the Sanur variety...

Nice allusion joke, Adam. But don't forget that a lot of the Sanur "crabs" actually come from Banyuwangi, Jember, Malang, Surabaya, etc.

I reckon the locally available lobsters are getting smaller, too. Hard to find really good edible ones. Might have to get a more powerful microscope to see them, soon.

Not a lot but some Mangroves. Crabs were tiny 3-4 inches across. Mor trouble than they are worth to eat. Crabs in the Surya Crab chain are woute large and delicious but I only see them when they have been cooked.

I remember back in 92'-93 they were huge, cheap and plentifull... I suppose I added to the onslaught of the population back then,, oh well, I guess I will be stuck with washing down a filet O' fish from Mc Donalds with a cold Bintang and dream of what use to be... seems to be the prevailing theme for Bali nowdays...

oh well, I guess I will be stuck with washing down a filet O' fish from Mc Donalds with a cold Bintang and dream of what use to be... seems to be the prevailing theme for Bali nowdays

It's called progress and progress is meant to be good apparently, just ask any capitalist......

Pity, as the bank balances of the rich progresses, the rest of us are buried under piles of plastic and forced to eat tiny crabs.....

As an aside, does anybody know if Bali ever had crocodiles? I know Bali doesn't have a lot of mangroves and the ones at Benoa aren't much good for anything other than breeding mosquitoes but would be interesting to see a 12 foot saltie turn up there.

Here is the temple of the white crocodile:

http://www.bali3d.com/bali-temple-panorama.php

Hi Bert,

Hmmm, very interesting, I'm guessing that if croc's form part of Balinese mythology then it's probably fair to say that they would have existed there at some stage. Probably ended up on little bamboo sticks a long time ago but ......not that there's anything wrong with that, they taste bloody good and the only thing less trustworthy than a croc is a corporate director. Nasty bits of gear.

They exist in Sumatra and they exist in Irian Jaya so cant imagine the bits in the middle would have been left out.