My Crab Themed Weekend

I've had a crab themed weekend.

There was the crab net incident on Friday afternoon and then I had another crab encounter on Sunday.

I was kayaking along the west side of the Destin bridge towards the Coast Guard Station when I noticed something bright red under the water.

I paddled over and saw a red crab trap. There was no buoy attached and it was filled with crabs.

When I got back to where the Island King was I told him about the trap so we went back down to check it out.

He and the Island Girl snorkeled through the grass beds, looking for shells and it wasn't long before they reached the trap.





He shook the crabs out of the trap and unfortunately they were all females with eggs, which you can't keep, so as they came out of the trap they scurried to the water.



I was walking up while this was happening and I noticed one crab run past me with only one claw.

Poor girl. Luckily, she'll grow a new one.

But then the next thing I see is this.



There's a claw clamped down on the claw of another crab!



(I have no idea why there is no sound. New camera, a lot of features and a dense operator could be the problem.)

And this crab was angry. She'd been attacked, she now has a claw stuck to her claw and she's been trapped in a cage for who knows how long.

We could have caught her and removed the offending claw but she was in full attack mode, hissing and showing us her claws.

So we chose to let nature handle it and stay far away from her as she made her way back into the bay.

And now we're holding a very nice crab trap.

A nice crab trap with no bait in it, no name or tag on it, no buoy attached to it, nothing to indicate anything other than this was a lost or abandoned trap.

Crab trap robbing (taking the crabs out of a trap) and stealing (taking the whole trap) is a big No-No here.

It's been happening for generations and if the owner doesn't find and beat the daylights out of you, the Fish and Wildlife guys will find and arrest you.

So we made real sure this was an abandoned trap and then happily brought it home.

I think we should go crabbing tonight - the way my luck is running I should be able to bring in the mother lode.

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