Save the Crabs!

About 150 tiny Crab!

Taking them to the Sound

Returning crab to the water

They're here-really! Can you see some?

This past Saturday we went to Sequim to work on Daryl's mom's house. The road we travel to get there is becoming quite familiar as we've gone several times over the last month. We stopped at a little gas station/convenience store along the Hood Canal and made an odd discovery! As I was staring out over the parking lot, waiting for Daryl to pay inside the store, I noticed something moving and went out to investigate. It was a tiny crab and I picked it up to go show the kids. While I was letting the kids look at it Daryl noticed there were more--many, MANY, more--all over the parking lot. We're still not quite sure how they got there but it likely had something to do with a boat that pulled out of the station while we were there. Whether they had trapped them or they were just stow-aways somehow I guess we'll never know. We decided to gather as many as we could, quickly--lots were already squashed by cars--and dump them back in the Puget Sound. It took awhile to convince Trevor and Ally to help--they were afraid of getting pinched! I counted, as best I could--how do you count layers of tiny crabs scurrying around a box!--and we estimate we had about 150 in the box!! We drove to a boat launch and put them back in the water. They scurried off so fast once in the water and they blend in with the rocks so well it was hard to keep up with them after just a few seconds. It was a fun family "conservation effort"!!