Someone's been stealing our crabs' legs!

It seems to be molting season, because today we found the molt, or shed-off shell, of our green crab Petey - the second molt this week. When we found the living, breathing Petey hiding under a rock, we discovered that, just like our rock crab that had molted a few days before, he had fallen victim to our resident leg thief!

As Samantha mentioned in yesterday's blog post, crabs are soft and vulnerable right after they molt - they need a few days to grow and harden up. So both Petey and the rock crab were attacked at their most vulnerable. We're not quite sure who's taking those legs, though we have an idea, based on something we witnessed today: a flounder creeping up on a hermit crab and snatching its leg as a snack! We crushed up a few blue mussels for Flappy, Mikey and Winnie the Pooh to eat, with the hopes of curbing their appetites and giving them reason to leave our poor crabs alone. Life is tough in the touch tank!

Speaking of snacks... the urchin craft continued to be a big hit today. After learning about the green sea urchin, our feature of the week, several visitors used marshmallows and pretzel sticks to create their own urchins - and then eat them! Here are a few of our friends piecing together the craft:


Come see the urchin for yourself - and help us solve the case of the crab leg crook! See you tomorrow!