Kelp Crabs, love 'em, just don't try to pick them up

This guy was none to happy with me.

I was trying to get a picture of him on my camera phone as I was working a Beach Naturalist shift for the Seattle Aquarium this fall, and he was busy walking around the muck underneath the dock at Des Moines beach park. One of our group actually ventured to pick him up (I tried that once in front of a Girl Scout troup only to have the beast pinch me, hard, with its very long claws). Long story short, a female was underneath, the guy was trying to mate and very annoyed his wooing had been interrupted.

We found another of his kind on the piers, all wrapped up in fishing line (I pick that up, along with plastic bags or all plastic, whenever I find it.) He was busy trying to pinch us, while we were busy trying to cut him loose.

While on the topics of crabs, every shift I pulled this summer and fall turned up a bunch of dead dungeness crabs underneath the pier. Now they weren't the result of the gulls. They were just dead. I think this was because folks crabbing off the pier just throw them back into the water if they are a. female or b. not legal. Unf. for the crab, getting tossed back into the water is like throwing one of us out of a 10-story window. They rarely survive the shock. I think the City of Des Moines should put a basket at the end of the dock for folks to lower the crabs back into the water, so they can live, pinch and mate for another day.