Spotted Porcelain Crab – Neopetrolisthes maculatus
I will admit that I am feeling a bit crabby today. The rains have returned after a blissful stretch of warm and sunny weather here in Vancouver. In the span of a few lovely days, during which our garden literally sprung into Spring, things like narcissus and hyacinths started flowering madly. Shoots of perennials, coaxed by the sun, and big pregnant buds on the magnolias and lilacs swelled, ready to burst out into riots of colour. And the heavy rain just makes it all a soggy, sad mess out there in the back forty on days like these.
Yesterday I shared a Hairy Squat Lobster – and why this thing is a lobster, and not a crab, I leave to the critter pros out there to define. A quick search I did brought up some nasty info on crabs vs lobsters making their homes on humans’ naughty bits and how to rid oneself of them. Yuckers. After that unsavoury info, I did not have the desire to delve any deeper ;^)
Today’s crustacean, the Spotted Porcelain Crab (about 1 inch across on its carapace), specifically inhabits carpet anemones (which have short tendrils, and beautiful spotted undersides). There is very often a pair of these crabs in residence, but again, like many crustaceans, they are camera shy, and getting one still, on an often undulating anemone, can be another exercise in frustration. You are probably getting that I can be frustrated quite easily while taking pictures underwater, and this is true. Never the world’s most patient person, I can be sorely tested by trying to photograph critters that aren’t easily captured (with a camera). Still, there is much satisfaction in actually sticking it out, and getting a decent shot…
The Spotted Porcelain Crab deploys those frondy thingies to sweep the water for tasty tidbits, in an action quite similar to a barnacle. It then swipes the frond through its mouth to scrape off the stuff to ingest.
