Seafood · FFET10380
Swimming crab (gazami crab)
Females with well-developed gonads are also called honggao xie.
Sea fish, shellfish, sea cucumber, seaweed and the dried foods of the sea.
Here, swimming crab refers to Portunus trituberculatus. It inhabits coastal waters from Guangxi to Liaodong, on sandy or muddy bottoms at depths of about 10–30 meters. Females with well-developed gonads are also called honggao xie, and their roe is prized.
What
Swimming crab here means Portunus trituberculatus, also known in Chinese as baixie, baihuaxie and haixie. Females with well-developed gonads are also called honggao xie.3
When
An August 13, 2025 report records that Zhoushan boats with special fishing permits had resumed fishing after the 3-month East China Sea summer moratorium. Males are favored in summer and females full of roe in fall and winter. Ming-dynasty author Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu describes youmou as a large, flat crab with oar-like rear legs, but the consulted page gives no year and its identification as this species is uncertain, so it cannot establish the species' earliest attestation.1,2,5
Where
The species inhabits coastal waters from Guangxi to Liaodong, on sandy or muddy bottoms at depths of about 10–30 meters. Swimming crabs were landed at Shenjiamen in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, in 2025.3,1
How
In 2025, crabs caught by Zhoushan fishing boats were landed, sorted, tied and shipped throughout China.1
Impact and influence
China's marine catch of swimming crab totaled 452,555 metric tons in 2024, including 141,374 metric tons in Zhejiang. An August 13, 2025 report records that about 2,000 metric tons were being landed daily at Zhoushan International Aquatic Products City in Shenjiamen.2,1