Callinectes sapidus

Callinectes sapidus
Female from the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Malacostraca
Order:	Decapoda
Suborder:	Pleocyemata
Infraorder:	Brachyura
Family:	Portunidae
Genus:	Callinectes
Species:	C. sapidus
Binomial name
Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896
Synonyms [1]
Lupa hastata Say, 1817 Portunus diacantha Latreille, 1825 Lupa diacantha Milne-Edwards, 1834 Callinectes hastatus Ordway, 1883

Callinectes sapidus (from the Ancient Greek κάλλος,"beautiful" + nectes, "swimmer", and Latin sapidus, "savory"), the blue crab, Atlantic blue crab, or, regionally, the Maryland blue crab, is a species of crab native to the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and introduced internationally.

C. sapidus is of considerable culinary and economic importance in the United States, particularly in Louisiana, the Carolinas, the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware, and New Jersey. It is the Maryland state crustacean and the state's largest commercial fishery.^[2] Due to overfishing and environmental pressures some of the fisheries have seen declining yields, especially in the Chesapeake Bay fishery.

Unlike other fisheries affected by climate change, blue crab is expected to do well; warming causes better breeding conditions, more survivable winters, and a greater range of habitable areas on the Atlantic coast.^[3][4] Whether this will have negative effects on the surrounding ecosystems from an increased crab population is still unclear.^[3]