Down in Galveston, there are small mud-flat-type areas where you can find hundreds of really nice shells. Trouble is, they're almost invariably occupied by hermit crabs.
I started musing on this after I found a beautiful five-inch-plus lightning whelk that I couldn't take because there was a Petrochirus diogenes (giant hermit crab) living in it. These hermits often have nice shells because they go places with said shells rather than letting them get washed around and beat up. I would like these shells for my collections, but I obviously can't go around yanking crabs from their shells.
So my idea is this: I take a 5-10 gallon tub of some kind down to the hermit-crab-filled areas, fill it with water from there, pop in an airstone, add a few handfuls of sand and maybe a couple of rocks, and then go hunting for hermits with really nice shells. I put the hermits with the nice shells in the tub, give them a few minutes to calm down (hermits seem pretty chill once they realize they won't be eaten), and then provide them with a lot of alternate shells. Being hermit crabs, they'll inspect the shells, and hopefully swap their nice shells for the alternate ones. Then I can take the nice shells, release the hermits, and get another batch.
The problem is, I don't know what to use as alternate shells. I can't use nonnative shells, obviously. I can't use craft store shells, even if they're a native type, because those have probably been taken from the wild with live things in them- the point here is to avoid killing things for shells.
My only realistic option (aside from making fake shells) is to find other shells that I don't like as much, ones with defects that a crab won't care about- dents, chips, broken tips, etc- and then see if the crabs will swap those nice shells of theirs for my not-so-nice ones. I doubt they care if their shell is pristine or not. Besides, judging by the broken shells I've seen hermits in, a lot of those areas have a bit of a shell shortage.
Maybe I wouldn't even need to put them in a tub. Maybe placing a small pile of spare shells in an easily-reached spot spot would allow me to just quietly steal the occasional unoccupied shell as the crabs find new ones.
Any other ideas? These crabs are bringing up shells from deeper spots that I can't properly reach, and the only intact lightning whelks I've seen so far have been on crabs, so I really want to find a way to trade something for those nice shells they have.
I started musing on this after I found a beautiful five-inch-plus lightning whelk that I couldn't take because there was a Petrochirus diogenes (giant hermit crab) living in it. These hermits often have nice shells because they go places with said shells rather than letting them get washed around and beat up. I would like these shells for my collections, but I obviously can't go around yanking crabs from their shells.
So my idea is this: I take a 5-10 gallon tub of some kind down to the hermit-crab-filled areas, fill it with water from there, pop in an airstone, add a few handfuls of sand and maybe a couple of rocks, and then go hunting for hermits with really nice shells. I put the hermits with the nice shells in the tub, give them a few minutes to calm down (hermits seem pretty chill once they realize they won't be eaten), and then provide them with a lot of alternate shells. Being hermit crabs, they'll inspect the shells, and hopefully swap their nice shells for the alternate ones. Then I can take the nice shells, release the hermits, and get another batch.
The problem is, I don't know what to use as alternate shells. I can't use nonnative shells, obviously. I can't use craft store shells, even if they're a native type, because those have probably been taken from the wild with live things in them- the point here is to avoid killing things for shells.
My only realistic option (aside from making fake shells) is to find other shells that I don't like as much, ones with defects that a crab won't care about- dents, chips, broken tips, etc- and then see if the crabs will swap those nice shells of theirs for my not-so-nice ones. I doubt they care if their shell is pristine or not. Besides, judging by the broken shells I've seen hermits in, a lot of those areas have a bit of a shell shortage.
Maybe I wouldn't even need to put them in a tub. Maybe placing a small pile of spare shells in an easily-reached spot spot would allow me to just quietly steal the occasional unoccupied shell as the crabs find new ones.
Any other ideas? These crabs are bringing up shells from deeper spots that I can't properly reach, and the only intact lightning whelks I've seen so far have been on crabs, so I really want to find a way to trade something for those nice shells they have.
