About Hana Hou!
Hawaiian Airlines
Contact Us
  
Waikiki Chic Style for the street and the strand
Vol. 11, No. 5
October/November 2008
  >>   My Own Private Ironman
  >>   The Moon and the Turtle
 

Crustacea Fantastica (Page 7)
The housing crisis: This Elassochirus tenuimanus, or widehand hermit crab, comes from the temperate waters of San Juan Island, as does the Elassochirus tenuimanus featured on the opening spread. That crab had taken up residence in a vivid pumpkin-orange sponge when Middleton met it. “It was a knockout,” she recalls, “with its gold eyes, bluish-red legs, huge claw and living in this vibrant DayGlo sponge.” When shells are in short supply, hermit crabs may scavenge for alternate housing: sponges, abandoned worm tubes, rock crevasses. Even when a hermit crab has found an ideal shell, that doesn’t necessarily mean its worries are over: As hermit crabs grow, they must move from shell to shell to find new homes that will accommodate their increasing size. And the modern world has brought a new peril to the eons-old hermit crab: ocean acidification. “Ocean acidification comes from increasing CO2,” says Middleton. “It dissolves calcium, which is what shells are composed of. Hermit crabs rely on calcium to survive. So far they’ve have been able to adapt to their surroundings, but evolution takes time—and they might not have enough.”  

 

[The following organizations provided access to allow the creation of these photographs: Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument; NOAA CReefs Program, Census of Marine Life; and Friday Harbor Marine Lab, University of Washington.]
[back]