{"id":1550,"date":"2012-07-03T09:17:44","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T08:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2012-11-15T21:41:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T21:41:40","slug":"edible-crabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/edible-crabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Edible crabs, a little natural history."},"content":{"rendered":"

All the images in this blog are available to license.\u00a0 To view a gallery (license images or purchase prints of) these, and more of my North east Atlantic marine invertebrate images go here<\/a>.\u00a0 Alternatively you can search all my online stock images at my www.colinmunro.photoshelter.com\u00a0 site through the search box (top right) here<\/a> or on my main website here<\/a>.\u00a0 Edible crab images, Cancer pagurus images, stock images.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Edible crabs<\/strong>
\nThe pie-crust edged shell of the European edible crab, Cancer pagurus, is one of the most familiar sights in fishmongers windows and supermarket fish counters. Known by British fishermen as the brown crab, due to the deep reddish-brown colouration of its shell.\u00a0 This is the crab we normally eat as ‘dressed crab’, with the crab meat served arranged in the open crab shell.\u00a0 Juvenile edible crabs are often found under boulders by children rock pooling on the shore, their reddish-brown colour and much more chunky claws (chelipeds) easily distinuishing them from the more common shore crab (Carcinus maenus).<\/p>\n

\"Edible<\/a>

Edible crab or brown crab, Cancer pagurus, close up, showing eyes. MBI000266<\/p><\/div>\n

Adults generally live further offshore, down to about 200 metres depth.\u00a0 Away from rocky areas edible crabs tend to bury themselves in ther sediment.\u00a0 They’re pretty well camouflaged when they do this, one has to look pretty hard to make out the outline of their shell or see the two beady little eyes watching to see if you’ve spotted them.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

An edible crab, Cancer pagurus, lying hidden in a shallow depression it has dug in the sediment. Image No. MBI001178<\/p><\/div>\n

Edible crabs are prodigious excavators of sandy or muddy seabeds.\u00a0 During the course of a dive one can often observe numerous large shallow ‘craters’ created by edible crabs.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An edible crab, Cancer pagurus, digs in to algae covered sediment to create a depression in which to hide. Image No. MBI001171<\/p><\/div>\n

Migrations<\/strong>
\nWithin the English Channel edible crabs undertake interesting migrations.\u00a0 Females tend to move west or southwest; they can travel 2-3 kilometers a day, with some travelling up to 200 miles.\u00a0 They larvae, which are planktonic for 60-90 days, tend to drift east, thus restocking the areas from which the adults migrated (Pawson, 1995).\u00a0 Mating occurs in spring, shortly after the females have moulted, but the sperm is stored by the females and eggs are fertilised once they move offshore the following winter.<\/p>\n

Lifespan and minimum landing sizes<\/strong>
\nEdible crabs generally live for 25-30 years.\u00a0 There are various reports of them living up to 100 years but it’s hard to assess how reliable these reports are.\u00a0 The minum landing size various regionally in UK waters between 130 and 140mm across the carapace.\u00a0 In Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles this is increased (for male crabs only) to 160mm.<\/p>\n

Fun facts<\/strong>
\nThe largest edible crab ever caught in British waters is believed to be one landed, not by a commercial fisherman, but by an amatuer diver.\u00a0 Paul Worsley landed a 17lb crab with a 12 inch wide shell in July 2008.\u00a0 This monster was caught on the wreck of the Empress of India, a British battleship dating from the 1890s that lies in deep water in Lyme Bay, Southwest England.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An edible crab, Cancer pagurus, raises its large heavy claws (chelipeds) adopting a defensive posture. Image No. MBI001249<\/p><\/div>\n

\"An<\/a>

An edible crab, Cancer pagurus, attempting to hide in maerl gravel. Image No. MBI001250<\/p><\/div>\n

All images copyright Colin Munro
\nwww.colinmunrophotography.com<\/a>
\nwww.colinmunro.photoshelter.com<\/a><\/p>\n

All the images in this blog are available to license.\u00a0 To view a gallery (license images or purchase prints of) these, and more of my North east Atlantic marine invertebrate images go here<\/a>.\u00a0 Alternatively you can search all my online stock images at my www.colinmunro.photoshelter.com\u00a0 site through the search box (top right) here<\/a> or on my main website here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

References<\/em>
\nPawson, M., G. 1995. Biogeographical<\/em> identification of English Channel fish and shellfish stocks<\/em>. Fisheries Research Technical Report (number 99), MAFF Direct Fisheries Research Lowestoft, England. Available from: http:\/\/www.cefas.co.uk\/Publications\/techrep\/tech99.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the images in this blog are available to license.\u00a0 To view a gallery (license images or purchase prints of) these, and more of my North east Atlantic marine invertebrate images go here.\u00a0 Alternatively you can search all my online stock images at my www.colinmunro.photoshelter.com\u00a0 site through the search box (top right) here or on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[545,556,544,554,550,143,547,548,543,551,553,549,555,546,552],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-life","tag-brown-crab","tag-brown-crab-images","tag-cancer-pagurus","tag-cancer-pagurus-images","tag-cancer-pagurus-reproduction","tag-colin-munro-photography","tag-crab-fishery","tag-crab-landing-sizes","tag-edible-crab","tag-edible-crab-behaviour","tag-edible-crab-images","tag-edible-crab-reproduction","tag-edible-crab-stock-images","tag-edible-crabs","tag-marine-life-english-channel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2125,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/2125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinmunrophotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}