Stephen's Red Spider Crab

Posted by Lars Justinen (Quatsino, Canada) on 9 May 2008 in People & Portraits.

Yesterday Hannah spotted a big spider crab in the water along side our dock. Using a frozen prawn tied to a fishing line we pulled him up and Hannah caught it in her butterfly net. She carried it half way up to the house until it tried to pinch her with its claw and she realized its claws could get a lot closer to where she was holding it than she had thought. I carried it the rest of the way and we put the spider crab into Stephen's aquarium. After it settled down, we fed it the prawn it had tried to get earlier. We all recently helped Stephen spruce up his tank and add new salt water, so it was ready to accept a new guest. Later in the day, though, Stephen let it go at the end of our dock. He was concerned, and I concurred, that it was too big for the aquarium. But it was fun to watch the behavior, for at least a little while, of this exotic creature.