Rare blue crab attracts visitors’ attention
Among the Kamchatka crabs inhabiting the tank at the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk Exhibit there is a blue crab remarkable for its unusual coloration. The species has got the name of blue crab precisely because of the colour.
“Visitors often wonder if it is a plastic model of a crab”, says Anatoly Sokolov, a specialist of the Department of the Russian Far East Marine Organisms at the Primorsky Aquarium. “In fact, the blue crab is a species distributed in the Bering Sea where it is considered a commercial one. It also occurs in the Sea of Okhotsk and occasionally in the Sea of Japan. But our specimen is indeed rare as it differs from its relatives by a bright and intense blue colour, and in most representatives of this species the carapace and claws have just a bluish tint”.
General information
The adult blue crab’s carapace can reach up to 28 cm in width. Blue crabs feed on invertebrates and freshly dead fish. They live at a depth range of 20 to 250 m.
It’s worth noting that the blue crab dwelling in the Aquarium exhibit is 15 years old, and the lifespan of the species is about 25 years.