If You Can't Run With the Big Crab, Get Off the Porch.

Calcinus revi in the delicate clutches of the Redoubtable SKG

     Five years ago, our first full winter in Hawaii,  Sandra and I became interested in hermit crabs.  This was largely because that year the tidepools in front of our condominium in Kailua Kona were amazingly prolific for the little fellows.  For a field guide we used John Hoover's Sea Creatures.  When that proved inadequate I made contact with Marta de Maintenon, a patient young professor of invertebrate zoology at the university in Hilo.  She  taught us that, like many animals, hermit crabs change color as they mature.  By persistently looking at every crab on our beach, we encountered a tiny white hermit crab with black tips on his chelipeds (otherwise known as claws).  An internet search by the redoubtable SKG suggested that this little guy was Calcinus revi, a crab previously unknown to Hawaii.  We got to converse (on the web) with the luminaries of carcinology who had an interest in the genus Calcinus, Patsy McLaughlin in Anacortes and Joseph Poupin in France.  For a parvenue who always wanted to be a marine biologist, life was as sweet as the leg off a dungeness dipped in drawn butter with lemon.

Where are we going and why am I in this hand basket?

     The last few years we kept an aquarium and maintained a few hermits as pets.  They ate ahi off a wooden skewer and acquired such  bold names as the Sheriff and the Mikado.  And we have constantly been on the lookout for crabs while snorkeling.  As I may have mentioned before, the trick in finding hermits here in Hawaii is looking for shells that don't seem to belong to their original molluscan owner.  Often these shells declare their antiquity with a rosy coat of coralline algae. 

    Yesterday Sandra found a suspicious Triton shell among the rubble at Kahaluu.  She brought it to me and we set it among the coral in about two feet of water.  The bay was fairly quiet, but as I attempted a photo I had to struggle in the current, trying to hold still while the crab eventually emerged.   When he came out, we were delighted to see that it was a Blood Crab, so named for the red patches at the elbow of the chelipeds. Blood Crabs are among the largest individuals of hermits we have had the pleasure to have known.  With their hairy legs, I think they are the most exotic of my acquaintances.

Mars Advancing !

   My first attempt at a photo was marred by the camera being set for a picture of the total eclipse of the moon, which occured here in Kona three nights ago.  We got the camera figured out, repositioned the crab in a niche, and waited for his appearance.  I hope you enjoy the resulting photographs.  At the end of the photo op, Sandra returned this fine fellow with the hairy legs to the exact spot where he was found.
     For some reason, it appears that hermit crabs at Kahaluu become active at the same time.  Yesterday, on the way in, we found a very active colony of Hazlitts Hermit Crabs.  Most were wearing little pink in their little pink Turbans.  The biggest and boldests, pictured below, may be carrying a well worn Triton shell.  
   The only other time I have found the Blood Crab, we found a second the next day.  It will be interesting to see if the hermit crab activity at Kahaluu picks up.
jeff

The Paterfamilius of the Hazlett's Colony