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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Horseshoe Crabs on Mandai Beach




We participated in a Horseshoe crab rescue with the Singapore Nature society on the northern tip of Singapore island this weekend.  You're looking across the beach (a.k.a. mud flat) and the Johor Straits to Malaysia.

 
 Horseshoe crabs have blue blood (copper based) and have been around over 450million years.  The spikes look a bit scary but they're completely harmless
The mud was sometimes calf deep and dive booties were a great asset
We collected over 700 crabs that were cataloged and released again.  Mostly we cut them free from old fishing nets and then removed the nets from the beach.


Also freed a few 'regular' crabs... they were a bit feistier!



Amazing how entangled some of the crabs were...

A lot of them had barnacles on them too (like the one in Jex's hand).