Striped Coral Hermit Crab – Paguritta vittata
Okay, so I am feeling crabby again, even though the biblical rain storm that we woke up to this morning has blown through (literally – huge, gusty winds right now), and the sun has made an appearance. I am crabby because I finally had a large cist removed from my lower back today. It was one of those things that I kept procrastinating about, not wanting to have the (minor) surgery I had this morning, for fear the stitches would keep me out of the water, and off the yoga mat, for a week or so. It ended up being quite the excavation (done in a surgical suite in a clinic under local anesthetic). The poor doc kept digging, and digging, and digging some more, trying to get the “bottom” of the thing (so it won’t grow back), that was very deeply rooted. So deep in fact that the local they gave me did not reach that area, and I just about hit the ceiling when she went in with the scalpel. She and her nurse assistant said it was the biggest, nastiest cist they had ever dealt with. So I’ve got that going for me I guess ;^)
Anyhoo, in keeping with today’s crabbiness, I offer up a Striped Coral Hermit Crab (Paguritta vittata). These things are t.i.n.y. – about half an inch max, and the body is always burrowed into their tubes in the coral, so what can be seen is maybe a 1/4 inch. They use those frond thingies, like the Spotted Porcelain Crab, to catch flyby food. I never would have seen one of these with my crapped out vision if my buddy Jamie hadn’t shown me one on a dive in Raja Ampat. Since then, I’ve kept a close eye out for them and have found them in Fiji, and other parts of Indo. Seriously challenging to photograph, at least for this blind old bat ;^)
The one featured above was found in the Banda Sea area of Indonesia.
