Wise old eyes

Every week or so, I remove all my hermit crabs from the aquarium while it is being cleaned. And while they're milling about in the holding basin, I count them. I brought 19 with me from the mainland two years ago; there are 19 today. The smaller ones may or may not survive the first few months; it's a risky time, with all the molts and other growing pains. New babies arrive; some grow up. But the larger ones just keep trundling along, occasionally switching into larger shells.

Some species of hermit crabs can live up to 30 years. How old are my big grainyhand hermits? I don't know; they're not telling.

But they have wise eyes.

Ol' Fuzzy, at the front of the tank, checking me out. On red Turkish towel.

"Waves, Hi!"

These are smart beasties.*

The common intertidal hermit crab Pagurus granosimanus learns in one or two trials to reject an attractive, novel food (beef) when illness is induced ... Food aversion learning has never before been reported in a crustacean. (Wight, Keith, et al. “Food Aversion Learning by the Hermit Crab Pagurus Granosimanus.” Biological Bulletin, vol. 178, no. 3, 1990, pp. 205–209. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1541820.)

*Smarter than some humans I know.**
** At least, as far as food choices go.

Supercritters

High above the rocks and surf, a diver waits for the right moment, the right wave. Repeatedly, he tenses as if to leap, then relaxes. Finally, the wave seems right; he's off!

Free fall.

Once down, he faces the next challenge; reaching the rocks he has to climb without being pounded to a pulp against them. Again and again, he turns and dives through the incoming wall of water; it's too high, too close, too solid. In a brief moment of calm as the ocean gathers itself for a fresh onslaught, he reaches the rock face and scrambles quickly up to safety.

It seems that nothing made of flesh could survive the relentless pounding of tons of water against immovable rocks.

Below the dive platform

Spraying, rushing, boisterous water.

But there is life, even in this tumult.

Seaweeds and maybe anemones in the surf.

At the far end of the beach, behind a breakwater, I waded out at low tide one day to look at some of the growing things on the rocks. The greenery on the rock above is a variety of rockweed; some of the darker things, at least on the breakwater, seemed to be tightly compacted anemones, a dark, spiky weed, and some sort of soft encrusting growth. A brighter green hair also grows on these rocks; short strands, probably kept trimmed by the rushing water.

Back to the rocks below the dive tower:

Rocks with assorted seaweeds.

But look what showed up when I zoomed the photos to full size!

Do you see the crab on the far right?

Zooming in even more. I don't know what those little critters are; there were others scattered around the seaweed areas.

A bit of sandstone sculpted by the waves among the stones at the base of the seawall. The waves reach this area, pounding downward, then draining quickly away; the current is swift and strong.

Zooming in. Long-legged crabs and tiny snails.

In another area of the beach, I collected some of those tiny snails; a fair number of them were hermit crabs. Some of these on the sandstone seem to be hermits, too. How they hold on as the water comes and goes, I can't imagine.

One of the hermits. About the size of a grain of rice.

And the next wave rushes in. The crabs and hermits and snails hold on; it's what they're used to.

Tough cookie

We stopped at the beach Sunday afternoon for just a few minutes, to cool down before we started the hot drive home. I waded in, and grabbed a quick snack for my critters; a handful of sea lettuce and another of eelgrass for the hermits, and two barnacled stones for the predatory snails.

At home, rinsing off the seaweeds, I discovered a young crab. He didn't want to be handled, and I had to catch him in my little net, but before I could transfer him to the tank, he had scrambled out and made a wild leap for freedom.

I looked for him everywhere; on the counter, underneath, on the floor. I swept and peered under the furniture. I moved everything movable. No sign of the crab. I decided he must have fallen into the tank, and was hiding under the sand. He would show up eventually.

This was about 2:00 PM. At 10:00 that night, 8 hours later, I found him in the bathroom behind the laundry basket. He had crossed the kitchen, walked down the carpeted hallway, under the bathroom door, around the corner, behind the laundry basket, and out the other side. Then he ran out of steam. When I picked him up, he was dry and still. He looked dead, but I quickly put him in water, just in case.

After a minute or two, a couple of bubbles escaped from his mouth. Half an hour later, one of his mouthparts was twitching. By 11, his eye stalks had popped up, and were trembling.

I checked back at 2 in the morning; he was walking around in his little plastic container. I moved him to the tank.

In the morning, he had dug himself a hideout under a shell, but when he saw me looking at him, he quickly left and ran around the back of the aquarium, stopping on the way to threaten his reflection in the glass.

"Scram! This is my spot!"

He spent a good day, digging holes here and there, making friends with the larger female crab, nibbling on shrimp pellets.

And then, in the evening, he died. The stress had been too much for him.

But I'm amazed at his determination, and his resilience.

Goodbye, little guy. You put up a really good fight!