Coastal Blue Crab Hopefully you've never bitten into a delicious hunk of snow crab meat and instantly spit it out because instead of crab you tasted... aspirin?! If you have, i ... ...

Mar 27 2013 - 1:37pm

Ghost crabs are often seen scuttling quickly along beaches at night, when they emerge from their burrows to feed, and can be difficult to photograph in the wild. They are common in M ... ...

Oct 10 2012 - 11:45am

A mangrove tree crab ( Aratus pisonii ) clings to a leaf near the Smithsonian Institution’s marine laboratory on Galeta Island, Panama, part of the Smithsonian Tropical ... ...

Sep 27 2012 - 9:45am

Another common species of sargassum shrimp,  Leander tenuicornis  (Palaemonidae), can be spotted by its long transparent claws or "chelae". Very similar shrimp are fo ... ...

Sep 13 2012 - 10:36am

Can you spot the amphipod ( Phronima atlantica ) in the below photo? She's the transparent lobster-looking animal in the middle, surrounded by her own eggs -- inside a ... ...

Sep 7 2012 - 4:35pm

When this tusk shell was brought up it was a surprise when a hermit crab poked out. Notice the large, operculate-shaped claw that this hermit can use to tightly cover the shell openi ... ...

Aug 10 2012 - 3:47pm

Male fiddler crabs, like this one collected on Moorea, wave their enlarged claw as way of signaling to other crabs, especially during mating season. Learn more about the Island o ... ...

Jul 30 2012 - 10:31am

Hermit crabs, like this one collected in Moorea, usually protect their soft, vulnerable abdomens from predators by reusing empty snail shells.  They are picky home owners and they wi ... ...

May 30 2012 - 11:45am

One of the most common inhabitants of the sargassum community, the shrimp Latreutes fucorum (Hippolytidae) is perfectly colored to hide on the leaf-like blades. Off ... ...

May 21 2012 - 4:06pm

This snapping shrimp female ( Synalpheus regalis ) is the queen of her colony which means she is the only female to have babies. She stores her clutch of eggs under her a ... ...

May 11 2012 - 3:34pm

Scientist Martha Nizinski holds a squat lobster ( Eumunida picta ) collected at the Lophelia reefs off Cape Lookout, North Carolina. Squat lobsters are extremely abund ... ...

Jul 27 2011 - 11:45am

The Galápagos Islands site in Ecuador was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978. Located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean nearly 1000 km from South America, the Galapagos Islan ... ...

Nov 4 2010 - 1:41pm

This shrimp farm in southern Belize is just one example of how mangroves worldwide are giving way to human development. In just the last decade, at least 35 percent of the world' ... ...

Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am

This brightly colored squat lobster collected in Moorea is a common find among the coral heads. Although called lobsters, this group of crustaceans is more closely related to ... ...

Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am

Thalassinidean shrimp ( Thalassinidea ) build complex burrows deep in the mud. More about mangroves ecosystem can be found in our Mangroves featured story . ... ...

Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am