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Millions of red crabs have begun their annual migration Christmas IslandMaking your way towards the sea in a wonderful landscape. The island’s small human population is actively involved in helping the crustaceans, using leaf blowers and garden rakes.
Alexia Jankowski, acting manager of Christmas Island National Park, confirmed on Thursday that the small Australian territory Indian Ocean These endemic Gecarcoidea natalis crabs number up to 200 million. It is estimated that up to 100 million individuals will travel from their forest burrows to the shoreline to breed.
This annual odyssey began last weekend with the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer rains.
The crabs seek shade in the middle of the day, Jankowski said, but in the early morning and late afternoon there is a huge, slow movement that carries them through streets and gardens toward the coast.
Their 1,200 human neighbors on the island usually make every effort to remove the red carpet of crustaceans from the streets.
“Some people may think they’re a nuisance, but most of us think it’s a privilege to experience them. They’re indiscriminate. So whatever they need to do to get to the shore, they’ll walk across it. So if you leave your front door open, you’ll come home and have a whole bunch of red crabs in your living room. Some people, if they need to pull their car out of the driveway in the morning, find themselves Have to take them out or they’re not going to be able to leave the house without harming the crabs,” she adds.
On shores, male crabs dig burrows where females spend two weeks laying and incubating eggs. Females are expected to release their eggs into the sea during high tide on November 14 or 15, during the last quarter of the moon.
The young spend a month riding ocean currents as tiny larvae before returning to Christmas Island as tiny crabs.
Mapped: Christmas Island
“When they’re little babies about half the size of your fingernail, we can’t rake them, because you’ll crush them. So instead we use a leaf blower,” Jankowski said.
“So about a month after the eggs were laid, we’re actually on the beach looking quite hilarious wearing these backpack leaf blowers and blowing all these little crabs off the road to try to reduce the impact of cars,” she added.