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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Feb. 05, 2010-Hermit Crab Beach

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Going Exploring

The seashells were walking!

We explored an isolated beach near Datai Bay in the Zodiac and we were surprised to see that all the seashells on the sands ahead of us were scurrying away from us; hundreds of them.

When we got close to one it simply plopped down on the sand and remained motionless, looking like any ordinary seashell.

I picked one up and it looked like a snail. I dropped it back onto the sand, perplexed. It just lay there.

Then another one caught my eye as it moved with surprising speed and then just as suddenly stopped.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Crab INSIDE!

I picked it up too and saw legs tucked in on the bottom side. I saw that it was not a snail but a crab inside a snail’s shell. A Hermit Crab! This whole place was overrun by Hermit Crabs.

We named this place Hermit Crab Beach, and we had fun looking at these creatures. One got so flustered that I had picked him up that he crawled right out of his house and jumped off my hand into the water and ran away abandoning his home. Judy picked up two others with pretty houses and introduced them to each other. She though she would like to keep at least one of the shells and maybe she could entice these two to move in together but instead they got into a bit if a scuffle and neither was rash enough to flee without his house.

Both were returned to the beach.

Watching the Hermit Crabs made this little day trip in the dingy into a real treat, and a surprising one at that but we should not have been too surprised; You never know what to expect when you land on an empty beach in a remote place.

Click here for more shots from Hermit Crab Beach

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Langkawi

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