Saturday, December 12, 2009

Get up at 3am and head out to Greta Beach to catch the annual red crab migration. About a month ago the male and female crabs traveled down the plateau forest and came to the ocean to rehydrate. The males then made and fought over nesting burrows, where "when two crabs love each other very much" billions of new baby crabs got their start. Shirking all further responsibility, the males then headed back up the terrace to their home on the plateau. The females stayed ocean side for about a month while the fertilized eggs, held in a special abdominal flap on their carapace, developed.
Somehow, during the during the last week of the phase of the moon at the early morning high tide, all the females make the charge for the water and release their eggs, which hatch upon contact. You can see the dark eggs bursting out of their abdominal flap, and they do this little claws-up, gyrating dance to release the eggs in the water.

They litter all possible surfaces, climbing the cliffs projecting over the ocean. Some females are a bit lazy about their motherly duties and simply drop their eggs from an overhanging precipice. Sometimes the eggs make to the water, and sometimes they land in your hair. And there's a surprising amount of momentum coming from a falling crabby egg mass.









High tide falls around 4am, so most of action happens in the pitch dark.






As dawn begins to break I set the camera on an extended exposure, and capture a few folks walking on the beach with their headlamps.










We stick around for sunrise and watch the last of crabs make their trek to the ocean.

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