Beach Crabs

Ghost Crab
Ghost Crab
Ocypode quadrata
Fiddler Crab
Fiddler Crab
Uca spp

These small crabs are largely terrestrial. Female Fiddler Crabs lack the huge claw of the male, which is very strong but is used only in dance-like territorial displays. Several species in the area differ mainly by habitat. Fiddlers prefer marshes and stream banks, where huge colonies riddle the peat with tunnels near the waterline. Almost entirely terrestrial, you will find Ghost Crabs skittering across the beaches at night. Placed in the water, they may even drown! Both grow to a body size of approximately 1 inch.

Fiddler Crabs
Fiddler Crabs tend to live in nasty places. Note the odd left-handed male at upper-right.

US Fish & Wildlife Service Species Profile


Leatherback Sea Turtle

Dermochelys coriacea

Size: to 70" and 1200 lbs.

Habitat: oceanic

Notes: The largest sea turtle in the world, and also the most likely to be seen in our cold waters, since Leatherbacks are at least partially warm-blooded! As implied by the name, they have a leathery flexible covering, rather than the bony hard shell of all other sea turtles - a unique feature that has caused them to be placed in a family of their own, apart from all other sea turtles. Leatherbacks feed on jellyfish.

Printed from njscuba.net