Crabs

When I was growing up in Montana and New Mexico, I had never seen a crab, let alone eaten one (at least not that I knew of). Then my family took my sister and me to the Northeast Coast of the U.S. -- and for the first time, probably in Massachusetts at my cousins' home, I tried crab cakes. They were delicious!

Then, we moved to the Island of Guam--a tropical paradise in the Western Pacific Ocean, just a tad north of the Equator--that's when I became extremely familiar with these interesting creatures.

Seems like crabs were all over the place... not only in the water (under the water) as well as along the shoreline, but also in all the jungles of the island. There were crabs that stayed submerged all the time in the deeper parts of the reef, and there were crabs (mostly the hermit crabs) that seemed to never venture into the water. The hermit crabs were tiny little things and then the "robber crabs" -- also called "coconut crabs" were huge, with size and meat resembling that of the large U.S. East Coast lobsters.

This Squidoo lens presents some information on these interesting critters.