“One Bad Crab” film and discussion with Director Sandy Cannon-Brown and Mary Parks of Greencrab.org
Her eye-opening film was primarily shot on Martha’s Vineyard, but Cannon-Brown traveled throughout New England to interview those at that forefront of efforts to protect the region’s valuable shellfish resources from the invasive green crab.
One scientist prominently featured in the film, Dr. Brian Beal of the Downeast Institute in Wells, ME, points to climate change and warming Gulf of Maine waters for an explosion of green crabs that have devastated that state’s once thriving softshell clam industry and a way of life in coastal communities. The film includes other researchers in Maine who are studying how climate change may result in an influx of blue crabs in New England, and how those crabs may affect green crab numbers.
One Bad Crab also explores initiatives to value green crabs as a sustainable resource. Mary Parks, executive director of GreenCrab.org, encourages chefs to include green crabs in their menus. One chef who incorporates green crabs into his cuisine is David Standridge of the Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, CT. In 2024, Standridge was awarded Best Chef of the Northeast by the James Beard Foundation, and the New York Times included the Shipwright’s Daughter among the 100 best restaurants in the United States.
Jason Jarvis, a Rhode Island fisherman and green crab harvester featured in the film, sells green crabs for bait and as food. Standridge is one of his customers.
Sandy Cannon-Brown, founder (1985) and president (1985-present) of VideoTakes, Inc., is an award-winning environmental filmmaker whose work has taken her throughout New England and the Chesapeake Bay, and to Central and South America, West Africa, the Northern Great Plains of Montana, and the Everglades. Before moving to Martha’s Vineyard in 2020, she lived in St. Michaels, MD and made 9 films about subjects important to the Chesapeake Bay. One Bad Crab is her first film focusing on New England. Earlier this year, she and her partners – writer Tom Horton and photographer Dave Harp – were honored by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum with the prestigious Bay Heritage Award for their “significant contributions to environmental conservation and regional culture.” Cannon-Brown also was an associate director for the Center for Environmental Filmmaking at American University, honored as CEF’s first senior scholar in 2013 and named AU’s adjunct professor of the year in 2011. Among her many honors, Women in Film & Video DC honored Cannon-Brown as a Woman of Vision in 1998. She served as WIFV’s president 2011-12.
MARY PARKSMary grew up in Penobscot Bay and first learned about green crab’s invasive impact from the surrounding lobstering and clamming community.
After working in traceability for a commercial fish wholesaler in Boston and learning more about bait markets for green crabs, she started asking what needed to be done to build a culinary market. In 2020 she went on to found GreenCrab.org: our nonprofit dedicated to building culinary markets for European green crab and spreading awareness of its invasive impact.