Today I cleaned 5 crab traps and made sure they had buoys and labels. I also went looking for supplies which included tupperware for the individual crabs I will be taking pictures of every few days and a large bin to keep several crabs in. The bin will be checked daily to see if there any are carapaces (empty molts). If I can catch the crabs that molted when they are soft, then I will put them on ice or in the refrigerator until I can find someone who wants to eat them. At the end of the day Dr. Bradt and I went down to the public launch to search for green crabs under rocks and in the marsh. We found several male crabs that had newly molted and a few that we thought were premolt. What we didn't expect to find was a soft shell female. Females are thought to molt in the late Summer, but this female was very soft and was being protected by a hard male who had his claws up and was standing over her. The remainder of the day I drilled holes in the tupperware containers for the individuals crabs.
