I discovered a sad little ghost crab on the beach this morning, splotched with oil. If you enlarge the photo you can see one eye stalk is completely oiled over and the other partially. Ghost crabs have a unique 360-degree field of vision, so the oil has definitely put it at a disadvantage in avoiding seagulls.
Though I admit ghost crabs are not my favorite creature since they will burrow into sea turtle nests and eat the eggs or munch on tiny hatchlings, I hate to see anything covered in oil and left unable to defend itself.
Ghost crabs also scare me when they tunnel into a sea turtle nest and I have to dig it out of the hole. Just as I get close, it invariably jumps out at me and I scream like a wild thing. I often wonder if that in turn frightens the little turtles.
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so my sister-in-law sent me a story from CNN that said they were working on a turtle egg relocation from the panhandle to cape can...on the atlantic shore.... Would that work? isn't there something about the sand and the smell and returning to the same beach?
just curious.
I haven't said anything about it because we haven't heard it officially, but you are correct, Jerilynn. I only heard they would be relocated to the Atlantic side though, not a specific place. I'll update folks on my blog when I hear something officially. It makes sense because we couldn't allow the little things to swim into heavily oiled water. I was just happy they are making contingency plans for them!
This gives me some relief, I will wait for your update on the turtle relocation! Meanwhile, I am so glad you explained about being gone to the Yucatan.
I am getting disgusted with the newspeople here portraying the beach as fine.
Great blog! Just found it. I ran into one of these ghost crabs on Satellite Beach on the East Coast. Mysteriously beautiful...
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