A Crabby Beach Day

Last week we went to Alva Beach, which is the beach about 15 minutes away from my sisters house. It was a pretty warm day and it wasn't even windy so I was hoping maybe I could get some good beach swimming in. when we got there we saw zillions of these little holes.

They were everywhere overlapping one another. for those who don't know, these delicate little holes come from crabs.

You maybe thinking "that is a tiny hole, tiny hole must = tiny crab. Not necessarily.  But it doesn't matter anyways because there wasn't a crab in site. Not one. Apperently they can feel or hear you coming because we couldn't see a single one anywhere. This was surprising because there were sooooo many holes!!
It wasnt until Rain and I were exploring through an estuary type thing that we found them. Oh did we find them! Crabs everywhere!

 All those pale dots on the sand. . . .crabs.

I did a little research and found that this little crab is called Mictyris longicarpus. More commonly known as the Soldier Crab. Makes sense to me since they travel in platoons!

Their bodies are about the size of a cherry but with the legs it feels a lot more like hundreds of blue golfballs running around! As it turns out the little sand balls are not from digging holes. Essentially they are a sandy version of a spit ball. They come out and chew up the sand eating the dead organic goodies in the sand and then they spit out these little balls of sand. COOL RIGHT! They are like beach janitors! 

These particular crabs only come out for feeding at low tide and sometimes not at all. blah blah, Science, cool stuff, blah, only for a couple hours, more science vocab. Let me explain, no there is too much, let me sum up. We were really lucky to get to see them come out for dinner. 

As cool as it was I have a secret fear of all things creepy and crawly and that includes our dear friend Mictyri here. Not that I couldn't go watch them or film one when it was alone but when they are in the vast groups, like this, it gives me the heebie jeebies and I am afraid I might step on one or it will crawl on me or something. You guys should have heard the sound of them all running over the sand. It was a bit like a rain stick. Really neat stuff!! 

Another successful trip to the beach.