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Cutest mud crab ever- We catch a few of these a year, again in our trawls. It's common name is, no kidding, Hairy crab.
I love the invert's- collect and photograph them alive whenever the opportunity presents itself. Crabs, shrimp and worms are really complex creatures- great to observe alive in a tank and fascinating to key out under the microscope.
Post if you guys want to see more-
Last edited by Chrystal_Murray on Sun Oct 17, 2010 7:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
My old neighbor was a benthic biologist at Mote marine. The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. I got to take a behind the scenes tour of her studies some years back.
After you see all the stuff that lives in that zone, you'll think twice about walking barefoot in the water. There's an amazing amount of things living there.
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley
Porcelain crab- they sweep particles from the water with the feathery appendages on their mouth. We have a tank load of them. We brought a few home. They made babies and the babies have made babies.
Mrs. Hermit- when we collected her she lived in a moon snail shell. We put her in the tank and right away she tried on new shells- we know she is a she, as she carried an egg mass. After days of trying shells she settled back into the moon. It's a year later and she finally took a new home- a crown conch shell. We will release her out on Jug Creek Shoal this spring before her next molt.
Sargassum Shrimp, Latreutes parvulus We caught him in a wad of sargassum blown into the sound after a hurricane passed. He lived about a year in our shrimp tank- we called him "Bevel-head".
If ever you see mats of sargassum just inside the bay/sound/harbor/pass scoop it up with a real small mesh net. Real interesting specimans that you won't often find inshore.
