{"id":6466,"date":"2017-12-20T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T21:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?page_id=6466"},"modified":"2017-12-20T13:22:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T21:22:00","slug":"2017-09","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/published-writings-and-art\/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine\/2017-09\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 \u2013 2 Purple Shore Crab"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Not \u201cThe Blue Lagoon\u201d with Brooke Shield for sure. Still, in mid-winter it\u2019s sex on the beach but with little purple shore crabs. This time of year, your beach walk might include watching for these little crabs. They can reach high densities if you look in the right places \u2013 large boulders, lots of cobbles and piles of drift wrack. Variable in color from purple to reddish-brown, olive or even yellow, they all have reddish-purple spots on the claws and a lack of hair on their legs \u2013 the nude part of this story, but also their scientific name Hemigrapsus nudus<\/em>. Adults are about an inch across a square-shaped carapace. After you spot one, carefully squat down for a look and watch the little eyes checking you out.<\/p>\n

In late winter, shore crabs mate \u2013 the sex part of this story. Don\u2019t think about how this works as it involves swimming legs, modified parts and typical male domination stuff. And just like Dungeness crabs, female shore crabs have wider abdomens than males, allowing them to carry masses of eggs around until they hatch, sometimes as many as 30,000 at one time. Eggs hang on as the female goes about life and then hatch in April or May. If you\u2019re on the beach in early summer, look for tiny dime-sized baby shore crab skeletons that didn\u2019t make it. These creatures are just a small part of what makes our beaches truly fun to explore. For me, it\u2019s the small stuff of nature that is most interesting.<\/p>\n

Larry Eifert paints and blogs about wild places at larryeifert.com. His work can be seen in many national parks across America.<\/p>\n

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Not \u201cThe Blue Lagoon\u201d with Brooke Shield for sure. Still, in mid-winter it\u2019s sex on the beach but with little purple shore crabs. This time of year, your beach walk might include watching for these little crabs. They can reach high densities if you look in the right places \u2013 large boulders, lots of cobbles … Continue reading 2017 \u2013 2 Purple Shore Crab<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6453,"menu_order":64,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6466","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6498,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6466\/revisions\/6498"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}