hermit crab trash...

Instead of shells, these hermit crabs used plastic bottle caps and other trash.

Here, a peek at the plastic homes of Okinawa's hermit crabs.

A hermit crab using a tree nut as a shell. According to Miller, this used to happen before there was plastic bottle caps to use.

A hermit crab retreating into a plastic bottle cap, photographed with the white portable field studio technique. Here, Miller would place the crab on a white studio board to photograph in situ, before being released.

Using the top of a glass bottle.

A hermit crab with a laundry detergent cap as a shell.

A plastic-encased hermit crab on Senaga Island in Okinawa.

Hermit crabs will fight over shells.

A hermit crab amid beach trash.

A hermit crab in Okinawa.

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sand bubbler crabs...

The sand bubbler crab eats the thin coating of edible organic particles on sand grains. When the tide goes out, the crab emerge from their burrows and start sifting through the sand, picking up the sand grains with their downward pointing pincers and bringing it to their mouth to scrap the microscopic food. After they have scrapped the sand grains clean, they roll them into little balls and toss them behind. By doing this they avoid sifting the same sand twice. The crabs work radially from the entrance to their burrow, scrapping out a tiny paths with little balls of sifted sand piled up on either side. The crabs come out of their burrows as soon as the tide recedes. You can almost tell how long the tide has been out by the patterns of their sand balls. The more intricate the pattern of sand balls, the longer the tide has been out. The sand bubbler crab is widespread across the Indo-Pacific region, where they occur abundantly on sandy beaches in the tropics and sub-tropics. [+] [+] [+] [+] [+]