When we went to Delaware, we found many horseshoe crabs on the shore. The biggest that we saw was about 27 inches! (The biggest one ever, found in Japan, was 31 inches!)
So, we thought they must be spawning. We wanted to see them spawn. We woke up at 5:30 am. We found a lot!
We flipped them ALL over. About 500 of them!!!
They are such silly gooses!… I mean …crabs! They always flip over and cannot flip back by themselves. So they fold their tail to their head and lunge it back fast, trying to flip over. But it does not work, tail just pierces the sand and they cannot get it out. Here is the funniest upside-down horseshoe crab… 🙂
Some of them turned over while going to lay eggs.
We turned these ones over too.
And they left tracks as they hovered over to the ocean.
Delaware Bay is the greatest spawning area of horseshoe crabs in the USA. This time we just got lucky, because we did not know about it. But next spring, we will go on purpose to see them spawn and look for animals in tidepools.
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