As demand for mud crabs skyrockets across Asia, overfishing and habitat loss are putting them at risk.
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00:00This crab fisherman is looking for the slightest movement on the surface of these muddy waters.
00:13When a claw emerges, he sticks his bare hands in to grab it before it grabs him.
00:24Mud crabs like this one have large meaty claws
00:28and are prized across Asia for their sweet taste.
00:31Here in Indonesia, villagers prepare it with local mangrove fruits and a secret spice.
00:37In Singapore, they're the centerpiece of the national dish,
00:41even though local crab populations have declined so drastically
00:45that they're mostly imported from other countries now.
00:49But mud crab habitats across Asia are disappearing.
00:53If Indonesia, one of the mud crabs' last havens, doesn't save the mangroves where they live,
00:59the creatures don't stand a chance.
01:10The Indonesian government and so-called crab villages like this one say they are replanting trees
01:16and cleaning up pollution to help preserve the species.
01:20But is it too little too late?
01:26Kulik is a 51-year-old mud crab fisherman at Kampung Kapiting Ekowisata Bali in Indonesia.
01:34He specializes in tracking down the elusive creatures in their natural habitats,
01:56salt tolerant trees and shrubs known as mangroves that grow along coastlines.
02:00Yeah, so, if it's a trap, it's really difficult to find.
02:07Barrel-shaped bamboo traps called booboos are an easy way to catch them.
02:13Kulik baits the booboos with fish or chicken heads
02:16and drops them in spots where the crabs usually feed on plants, mollusks, and crustaceans.
02:21So, if the ones are not possible to store the booboos,
02:26sometimes it might have a block or be호ise.
02:28It must be used long, so we have to use the neck that can be used to keep us.
02:33So, if we use this hand on the lid, we put it in the upper part.
02:35He also uses a bent iron tool to poke around in the mud, trying not to disturb the delicate mangroves.
03:05But catching mudgraves can be painful.
03:29So if we talk about the most difficult and easy, the most difficult is to use the hands.
03:35So the risk of the cap is higher.
03:38Because if we use the hands without protection, we will be able to move around.
03:44The most difficult thing is that if it's too big or how, sometimes it gets hurt.
03:53The process is that if we take it in the world, after we take it, we take it first.
04:00We take it first and then we clean it clean.
04:03In 2020, the Indonesian government outlawed harvesting crabs smaller than 12 centimeters or weighing under 150 grams.
04:12And pregnant females are off limits completely.
04:15This crab village has its own, slightly stricter rules to give the local crab population in these swamps a better chance to grow back.
04:23Fishermen are only allowed to catch a crab if it weighs at least 200 grams.
04:29But it needs to weigh 300 grams or more to be sold and eaten.
04:34So smaller crabs like these will need to spend about four months fattening up in a plastic container they call a crab apartment.
04:41Here, the villagers can easily feed them and monitor their growth until they are ready to be eaten.
04:47By focusing only on adult crabs, they are allowing the younger crabs time to grow large enough to reproduce and help prevent population decline.
04:56There are about 500 of these crab apartments on site.
05:01There are about 500 of these crab
05:06So, every day, we don't have to be able to get the crab to control the crab.
05:13So, if we open the door, then we don't know the crab is missing.
05:20Made Sumasa is the head of the Fishermen's Association, Kullik and other local fishers belong to.
05:28Once they weigh anywhere from 300 to 500 grams, the crabs are ready to move out of the apartments and into the kitchens of the crab village's restaurant.
05:38The local Fishermen's Association founded the crab village and purchases all of the crabs caught on site.
05:45Fishermen here catch only enough to feed the visitors of the restaurant.
05:49We sell at the Kukiting village.
05:52That's really what we sell at the Kukiting village.
05:54With a recipe from my grandmother's family.
05:59We sell at the website.
06:01We sell at the Jumbo size.
06:03There are one of the Jumbo size.
06:05It's 400 grams.
06:06There are one of the Jumbo size.
06:07And one of the Jumbo size.
06:09The Jumbo size is 500 grams.
06:10The Jumbo size is 500 grams.
06:11Su Rasmini runs the women's group,
06:14fishermen's wives who opened this restaurant in 2013.
06:18Today, she is preparing one of their best sellers.
06:41She sautées the crabs for about seven minutes.
07:07The texture of the daging kipiteng bakau is soft,
07:12and it's sweet, and it doesn't have a sweet aroma.
07:18It's medium, because the texture of the daging is more soft,
07:24and the taste is sweet.
07:27The crabs are priced anywhere from $11 to $21 per kilogram,
07:32depending on the variety.
07:34Exported crabs could fetch significantly higher prices in markets like Singapore.
07:40The restaurant never serves more than 300 crabs per day.
07:44In fact, we usually use a lot of peattings for a year.
07:50For the crabs, maybe in a year's month,
07:53there may be a number of samples of the crabs.
07:56For the crabs, maybe in a month,
07:58a peattings for a few more than 50 acres,
08:03for the crabs.
08:06while the crab village cooks its dish with local mangrove fruits the most popular way to eat the
08:19crustacean is with a sweet and savory tomato-based chili sauce chili crab is the signature dish of
08:27singapore found in top restaurants around the country like red house seafood it has a sweet
08:33tangy and thick red sauce and it's served in the cracked crab shell with fried or steamed buns
08:39called manto since the late 1990s this local delicacy has been almost 100 imported singapore
08:49is the second biggest importer of mud crabs in the world bringing in a few thousand tons per year
08:55according to some estimates nearly 90 percent of singapore's mangrove forests have been destroyed
09:01over the last 70 years the same thing is happening in indonesia but it wasn't always like this
09:21today nearly a fifth of all mangrove forests on earth are in indonesia over the past 30 years indonesia
09:29has lost around 50 percent of its mangrove forests because of deforestation for aquaculture farms
09:35timber and coastal development globally mangrove forests declined up to 35 percent over the same
09:43time span made and kulek experienced mangrove destruction directly in 2011 when the indonesian
09:50government built a new toll road through the region which involved cutting down about five acres of
09:56mangroves with the help of a government grant made set up a self-sustaining community that regulates the mud crab
10:04harvest they don't just limit how many mud crabs are harvested to preserve the 75 acres
10:33they oversee they also focus on preserving the trees there kemudian untuk dapat berbudidaya dengan baik
10:41saya sosialisasikan kepada masyarakat kita harus memelihara hutan ini kelestarian hutan ini harus bisa
10:49menanam harus bisa menjaga tidak boleh menebang ini contoh misal kalau dia mela menebang pohon gitu misal
10:57hal di aturan kami dia menebang pohon satu pohon dia harus menanam menggantinya dengan 50 sampai 100
11:05pohon dan itu harus hidup kalau kepiting ya di habis anggota kami yang yang melanggar itu akan kena
11:14vanisman juga dilarang ambil kepiting selama 6 bulan gitu misalnya
11:20the fishermen's collective is also working to end pollution in the area
11:25yang sampai sekarang itu kita contoh kecil yang belum berhasil kita tanggulangi 100% itu adalah
11:32sampah kiriman ini sampah kiriman bisa dari sungai bisa dari laut itu bisa setiap hari datang dan itu
11:41belum 100% kita bisa tanggulangi agus diana's main focus is mangrove conservation and education
11:50namun setelah saya dewasa ini pembabatan hutan dah merajalela disini banyak pohon mangrove yang ditebang
11:58kemudian pencemaran sampah nah disitulah saya merasa ingin mengembalikan alam yang saya nikmati waktu kecil
12:07supaya kembali seperti itu lagi
12:11part of augus's work is also educating young people in the area about the problems they face
12:17students regularly visit the site to learn about crab cultivation and help plant new mangrove trees
12:24despite the work of augus and others looking to protect the mangroves and the species that thrive
12:30there the global outlook doesn't look good the international union for conservation of nature
12:36predicts that more than half of the world's mangroves are at risk of collapse by 2050
12:43while mud crabs aren't on the endangered species list yet recent studies have shown the population is in
12:49decline and that preserving the mangroves is critical to saving them
12:52nah kalau pohonnya hilang otomatis ini kepiting juga akan hilang gimana kita bisa menikmati alamnya kalau
13:03alamnya kita rusak jadi kita harus mengembalikan kembali hutan itu sehingga kepiting bisa kepiting ikan dan
13:12sebagainya itu bisa tumbuh dan berkembang lagi disini nah itulah manfaat yang dia terima kalau kita jaga alam
13:20maka alam kan jaga kita dasarnya itu aja bagi kami
13:26dan juga bukanlah timmu di sana
13:28maka kita pasang spukernah
13:28sembuh hati kami
13:32karena mereka harus mengecekan rosa
13:35maka di sana
13:36jadi ada yang paling bagus
13:38dan juga harus mengecekan rosa
13:40maka di sana
13:40maka di sana
13:45maka di sana
13:47maka di sana
13:49maka di sana
13:50maka di sana
13:52maka di sana