Monday 6/5
This morning I went by myself to Seabrook, Hampton, and Newcastle to check the traps we had set. Seabrook and Hampton had a lot of crabs in them, but Newcastle did not have any and the bait was still fully in tact. Once I collected all of the crabs from each trap I returned back to the lab where Dr. Bradt had set two more traps over the weekend. One trap off of the dock at the lab had huge rock crabs in addition to several large green crabs. After each trap was emptied into a bucket, Dr. Bradt and I counted the number of males and females from each location in order to get a sex ratio. We found that in most places the female population was much higher than the males. I speculated that this could be because the females are not molting right now so they are eating, while males who are molting are not eating and are not being drawn to our traps. At the end of the day Roger, a writer from Ipswich who also works with green crabs, came to help us sort crabs. He taught us the signs of newly molted crabs, imminent phase, and premolt phase. If crabs are in the imminent phase they will be opaquey in color and they will be very dull in color, almost dirty. If they are in the premolt phase then the crabs will still look dirty, but will not be as opaque. Instead of being opaque they will have a grayish shadow around their abdomen and near the white ridges on the underside of the carapace coming from the abdomen and going out to the legs. Roger also took some of the soft shell crabs we found at the landing that day and is going to give them to his chef friends who will fry them up. The ones we identified as imminent were placed in individual containers and I will take pictures and measure them tomorrow.
- 1- carapace with gills in it that they leave behind
- 2- female crab. males have more spear shaped and females have a broader triangle as their abdomen
- 3- smaller rock crab amongst female green crabs
- 4- crab I picked up and his shell crumbled exposing soft body
- 5- gray bind containing many crabs caught in the traps
- 6- ventral view of male green crab. Probably premolt phase due to gray shadow around abdomen and white ridges. Also, white ridges still visible.