Occasionally these red crabs appear in huge numbers, swimming up near the surface and throughout the water column. We have run into such events at least twice and photographed the crabs both from the boat through the surface of the water and after getting in the water with them. Quite a few of the crabs were also on the bottom. The gulls seem to know when it is about to happen. Before any crabs were visible (to us, anyway) there were large numbers of seagulls sitting on the water all around us, far more than we usually see. Once the crabs started appearing, the gulls had a field day feeding on those that they could reach. The gulls would shake the crabs, or repeatedly drop and grab them again, apparently in an attempt to knock off their long sharp claws before eating them. Below, the fish were gathering to eat the crab appendages broken off by the gulls. A few brown pelicans in the area did not seem to know the same trick. They would try to eat the crabs but would get them stuck when the crabs pinched their soft mouth pouches. The first few photos are from the boat through still surface of the water.
Then we got in the water with them.
This photo from the boat shows the sheer numbers of crabs. They were visible in all directions.
Seagull food.
On the beaches, huge numbers of red crabs were visible. I did not check to see if these were full crabs washed ashore or just molted carapaces.
Created 2 June 2024