Colourful

In a party mood:

Grainy hand hermit, Pagurus granosimanus

The local hermit crabs, from here in our northern shores, look a bit grungy, clad in camouflage greys and greens, under our normal muted daylight, especially underwater. But under a bright light, it turns out that they're as brightly coloured as any of the tropical critters.

This was taken with double flash, the overhead tank light, plus two bright LED lights a couple of inches away. The hermit didn't seem to mind at all.

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Los cangrejos ermitaños de nuestras costas norteñas están vestidos en colores de lodo, en camuflaje gris y verde grisaceo, vistos bajo la luz del dia, nunca muy fuerte aquí en la isla y aún más tenue dentro del agua. Pero con una luz más fuerte, resulta que tienen colores tan brillantes como cualquiera de las criaturas tropicales.

Para esta foto, usé el flash con un esclavo auxiliar (dos), la luz normal del tanque, y además dos luces LED, a unas dos pulgadas de distancia. No parecía que la luz molestaba al ermitaño en absoluto.

Small fry

Young hermit crabs doing what hermits do ...

Small hairy hermit, Pagurus hirsutiusculus, very happy with a brand-new shrimp pellet.

Climbing the eelgrass. He's freshly molted; his carapace is clean and bright. It doesn't take long for algae and gunk (sometimes even baby barnacles) to begin to settle there, turning him to a dungy grey-green.

Small and smaller. Compare the size of the sand grains. The larger of the three is checking out a new shell, but soon decided it wasn't good enough. Wrong shape, wrong weight, wrong taste? Who knows what appeals to a hermit crab?

I call him Joseph

Our local hermit crabs, the Hairies, Pagurus hirsutiusculus, are usually a drab greenish-brownish-greyish mud colour. It's a mask; they're wearing a coating of algae, mud, leftover grunge, and sometimes a few barnacles. Underneath all that, they're a pale green, with blue knees and white patches on the legs. The body, of course, is hidden by the borrowed shell.

When they're freshly molted, and haven't had a chance to muddy themselves up yet, the true colours shine through. I caught one a few minutes after a molt, hanging out on the seaweed right in front of the wall, without a shell, showing off his coat of many colours.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet; all the colours of the rainbow.

The photo is fuzzy; the seaweed is swaying, the glass wall algae-coated. But the colours shine through.

Hairy hermit, as found on the shore, in his normal coating of mud and algae.

(Title from the Biblical story of Joseph.)

All new colours

Sparkling clean! This grainy hand hermit is freshly molted, and hasn't accumulated any of the usual dust, algae, and random critters that he usually carries.

Pagurus granosimanus

Bright orange,deep red, and yellowy-greens, pale blue spots on his legs.

The shell, of course, is still covered in algae. He discarded the old one, and picked up one a size larger, but not one of the fresh, white ones I brought last week. Sometimes the old jeans are just more comfortable.