The Day I Caught Crabs

It really is about high time I put this tale to bed, so this shall be one half of the concluding episode of a fantastic week on the Scillies. Maybe then I'll even start writing about the things I've found here on Skye, by way of a change.

Day 7 (Fri 16th October)

Today was all about wading through the rockpools, or to be more precise, wading through very shallow seas over rocky ledges. We were all pretty keen to hit Porth Mellon at low tide seeing as Bob had suggested it was a great spot for marine life. I'd never rockpooled here before, indeed it was new territory for all of us. Would it live up to the hype though?

The tide was falling as we arrived, so without further ado we waded in and split up in search of weirdness, of which we found plenty. The lifers were soon coming in thick and fast, particularly for Tiny who hadn't really spent much time in the waters of the far south west before this trip. Even I managed a modest fistful of lifers, mostly in the crustacean department. 

We were in an area dominated by Snakelocks Anemones and I spent quite a bit of time peering into their tentacles in search of either the crab or the shrimp which call these anemones home. No joy, despite lots of effort on my part. I was interrupted by Tiny calling me over to come look at the swanky shrimp and weird hermit crab he'd just found. I splashed my way across and was presented with this delightful shrimp

Just check out that shovel-head and the amazing neon blue halfmoons!

We had no idea what this was, but internet trawls that evening showed it to be Philocheras fasciatus, a lifer for all of us. There were multitudes of small mysid shrimps in the shallows but previous experience has taught me to leave them alone, they aren't easy buggers to get to species. 

Tiny's hermit crab was actually three. The ubiquituous Pagurus bernhardus being the first followed by an initially camera shy individual with a largely pale claw and bluish banded legs. Couple of pics of the latter below

This is Anapagurus hyndmanni - another lifer for all three of us

But then I looked at the third hermit crab and became just a little bit excited. Oh my days!!! I'm just going to swamp you with images now, because this little beggar was undoubtedly the find of the day, maybe even find of the entire trip.

Unusual choice of shell. And is that a bright red antenna and a red and blue striped leg I see???

What-the-fuuuu...........?!?!?!

Just LOOK at its eyes, it's like something out of The Muppets!

Contact initiated! I come in peace (well, a shell), earthman...

I had never seen anything like this before! Turns out that this is St Piran's Hermit Crab Clibanarius erythropus, a warm water species of crab that is usually only found to the south of Britain. It was first discovered in British waters in the early spring of 1960 at several sites in the south-west. Most of its populations were killed off thanks to the Torrey Canyon disaster and the subsequent clean-up operation, with just two fragile populations subsequently clinging on into the 1980s, after which it became lost as a British species. 

Then in 2016, several populations were more or less simultaneously discovered around both the north and south coasts of Cornwall. All animals discovered were of the same size/age class which would indicate they all arrived during a single colonisation event a year or two earlier. Hence, once again, Clibanarius is on the British list. As far as I can tell, this is the first record for Scillies. Quite a thrilling find, in all honesty! I was so captivated by the beast, I even took a bit of video footage. 

Eventually I popped it back in the sand and left it to continue on it's way. What a crazily cool beast! 

Whilst I'd been busily 'communing' with the crab, the chaps had located me another marine lifer and this time it was new for me but not for them. Sweet! 

Snot on a rock, how very lovely. Thanks for sharing, guys.

I actually had no idea what this was, though clearly both Tiny and The Ghost did. "It's a Sea Gherkin, mate" said Tiny. What? Really? No way. "Yep, sure looks like one to me" grumbled The Ghost. Oh right. I quickly had a look in the book and had to agree with them. My picture doesn't show it very well, but there are distinct yellow dots along the flaccid white body which helps clinch it as Pawsonia saxicola aka the Sea Gherkin. I have to say, if I found one of those in my Big Mac I'd be pretty unimpressed. Mind you, as a vegetarian living several hours drive from the nearest McDonalds, I'm not likely to eat many Big Macs anytime soon, though I do like gherkins. The green pickled ones, at least.

Velvet Swimming Crab - vicious bastards with a very strong nip. Note the vampire teeth.

There were good numbers of Olive Squat Lobsters Galathea squamifera huddled on the underside of rocks, I don't recall ever seeing so many in one site before. Despite checking quite a few, I couldn't find any other species with them. The bigger red and blue squatties look amazing, I would definitely like to find those at some point.

Once described by a chuckling Mark Telfer as "the most ridiculous animal I've ever seen"

By now I'd long since given up looking for spider crabs amongst the Snakelocks Anemones, so was really rather pleased when we quite unexpectedly found one beneath a rock!

Leach's Spider Crab Inachus phalangium covered in a sponge

I've never seen this crab before and was pleasantly surprised to see just how sizeable it was (I thought it would be about the size of a 50p coin!) I popped it back into the water whereby it adopted a strangely erect stance with one pair of legs held outstretched in a defensive (offensive?) fashion. Crabs are just weird, who knows what goes through their minds. 

I had hoped to be a sneaky bugger and tick off the sponge specific to these crabs, but it turns out there are lots of sponges that grow on them. Ho hum, that'll teach me to be greedy. And then, just as unexpectedly as the first, we found a second Leach's Spider Crab also beneath a rock! 

Clearly utilising a very different sponge than the first individual

As if all this crabby shenanigans wasn't enough, we found the usual Green Shore Crab, some quite large Edible Crabs, loads of Broad-clawed Porcelain-crabs, a few Long-clawed Porcelain-crabs, Risso's Crabs and this freaky bugger too

A difficult creature to make sense of, in or out of the water

This is the Long-legged Spider Crab Macropodia rostrata. I took a lot of pictures and fluked one of a feature on the underside of the rostrum which allows a specific identification to be made. They really are frustratingly awkward to photograph well.

As proof that there were non-crustaceans also present, here's the sponge Ophlitaspongia papilla

This is probably a sponge too, though I don't know which. It looks quite distinctive but I've yet to be convinced by anything I've seen online. 

In fact, there are probably five and maybe six unidentified species in this image!

The very lowest tides of our trip were happening tomorrow, which was our final day on these glorious islands. We were still undecided about which rockpools to target, but we intended to hit them hard wherever we ended up. 

By now we were all a bit knackered, so headed up the hill back to our cottage on The Garrison. I set about trying to ID a few mystery species from earlier whilst The Ghost checked his pager - "There's a Richard's Pipit at Porth Hellick Downs" he casually mentioned. "I need that!" screamed Tiny, "How far is that from here?" I just laughed, "Quite a way buddy. You gonna stomp it in your wellies?" Tiny was knackered, we all were in truth, but he also wanted that bird. "I'm going to get up at 5am and head off, get it at dawn" he stated. "Good luck, I'm not going" replied The Ghost. 5am, I thought. Fuck that, I'll still be asleep. I had to be heading nearly 800 miles back to Skye tomorrow evening.

Our plan was that Tiny would stomp to the Richard's Pipit at 5am, whilst The Ghost and I would take our time, put all of our luggage, including Tiny's, in the collection area and clean the cottage before heading out by about eight or nine. By that time Tiny should have skored the pipit and we could all do some rockpooling together. Old Town Bay was mooted as the best bet, we would meet there late morning, grab a few hours in the water, and then hustle our way back into town for our 3pm boarding on the Scillonian. 

Plus I had a plant that I needed to claw back from the boys. Yes, I knew exactly where I'd be heading in the morning...