For Berlin，Invasive Crustaceans Are A Tough Catch

For Berlin, Invasive Crustaceans Are A Tough Catch And A Tough Sell

In a shaded stream in the middle of Berlin'sramblingTiergarten park, fisherman Klaus Hidde lowered himself into the water recently. Several children stood on a platform above him and watched him wade in, wearing high rubber overalls. Hidde pulled a netted trap out of the water and shook it in the air.

rambling 蔓生的

"There's too few," Hidde says, shaking his head.

Hidde and his son are the only people licensed to catch thousands of Louisianacrawfishthat have invaded the waters of two parks in Berlin. The goal is to solve the problem by selling the catch to chefs and businesses. But on this day, there are a scant 100 crawfish between three nets.

crawfish 小龙虾

"They're not even a hundredth of a percent" of the solution to the problem, Hidde says, as he shakes the dark red crustaceans into a black bin.

This is the third year Louisiana crawfish have been seen in Berlin. City wildlife officer Derk Ehlert says when crawfish first appeared, the city releasedeelsinto the waterways, hoping they'd catch the crawfish and eat them. But then the next year, there were still 3,000 crawfish in the parks. This year there are 10 times as many and they seem to be spreading. At one point, hundreds of crawfishclamberedout of the lake andambledalong the Tiergarten's shaded paths.

eel 鳗

clamber 攀爬

amble 漫步

"It's normal for them but [ab]normal for the people in Germany," Ehlert says.

Crawfish are not entirely foreign to Germany. But the Louisiana crawfish, Procambarus clarkia, crowd out the native Astacus astacus European variety and carry a disease that kills them, Ehlert says.

"The home animals and plants must be saved," he says.

Louisiana crawfish have become a familiar problem elsewhere in the world, too: They havescarfed downfreshwater fish and other animals in Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. They turned up in Michigan. And a species of Washington State crawfish threatenstroutin Scotland. There, authorities caught and killed the crawfish, to avoid creating a market for them.

scarf down 狼吞虎咽地吃下

trout 蛙鱼

Berlin's experiment with eating the invasive crawfish is still a work in progress. To the west of the Tiergarten, in the Spandauborough, Olaf Pelz cracked the shell of one of Hidde's red crawfish in his restaurant, called Fisch Frank. Across town, thetrendyMarkthalle Neun food market hosted a Louisiana-style crab boil in mid-July, cooking the crawfish in apiquantbrothand serving them on trays with corn and potatoes. But Pelz said most of his customers are older and prefer a simple recipe.

borough 行政区

trendy 时髦的

piquant 开胃爽口的

broth 炖汤

"When we serve it here we make it with salad and bread and typical sauce," he says. He putsdollopsofmayonnaiseand cocktail sauce on the plate, and tops the crawfish with a thin slice of lemon.

dollop 少许

mayonnaise 蛋黄酱

Despite his efforts, customers are skeptical. Erika Klugert rises from her outdoor table to watch Pelz uncover the soft tail meat of the crawfish.

"This food requires too much work," Klugert says. She says she just ordered shrimp from Pelz and ate it. And it was much easier. "Without a shell, but it was delicious."

Hidde, the fisherman, notes another challenge: matching supply with demand. When he caught thousands of crawfish earlier this year, he says he struggled to find buyers. In late July he got an order for about 100 pounds of crawfish, but he could only find a few of the creatures in the one stream he checked in the Tiergarten. He guessed the rest were hiding from a Berlin heat wave.

"It gets on your nerves," he says of the uncertainties he faces on the job. "I raise expectations with people for a lot of crawfish, and I can't always fulfill them." He says he has about 25 traps strung across the Tiergarten and Britzer Garten, and hopes some of the others might help make up the order.

He has also bought a few more days of flexibility by using a swimming pool in his backyard as a holding tank.

Hidde acknowledges it may be impossible to clear all the invasive crawfish out of the waters of the two parks he has targeted. He finds five Louisiana crawfish for every Berlin crustacean, he says.

"There are so many that the effect is very small," he said. "It's like ahamsterrace."

hamster 仓鼠

Still, he says, he hopes hisculinaryfishing mission might at least hold the line and protect the rest of Germany's waters.

culinary 烹饪的