When there is a minus tide, some of us head to the beach to see what may be revealed. Cindy Morey did just that and found an animal rarely seen. She wrote, “I found something on our Irish Beach that I had never seen before and I have no idea what kind of crab it is. The body part was a reddish color with little bumps of white. The legs were like fur with nails at the end. I thought it was a piece of succulent until I picked it up and the legs moved. Looked more like a tarantula than a crab. It was like seeing an alien.”

I sent Cindy’s photos to intertidal zone expert Bob Van Syoc. He wrote, “Ah, looks like a rhinoceros crab!  I’m not too fond of the common name, but easier to pronounce than Rhinolithodes wossnessenskii, perhaps.  Count the ‘walking’ legs.  Eight, four on each side.  It’s in the same family as King crabs, the Lithodidae.  This cryptic creature blends in with rocky rubble and sponge covered rocks.  Nice photos.”

Here is a look at the underside of this crab.

Cryptic is a good way to describe this crab that stays hidden most of the time. They live at depths of 20 to 240 feet on rocky seafloors, often hiding in deep crevices. They are common in Alaskan waters and their southern boundary is supposed to be Crescent City.

In the twenty years I've been writing my Mendonoma Sightings column, I have never received a sighting of this unusual-looking crab...until now! I did share Cindy's photos with the folks at NOAA and they were happy to learn about this.

Thanks to Cindy for allowing me to share her photos with you here.

It's raining here this afternoon! Yes, after over a week of sunny and warm weather, it looks like the pendulum has swung back to rainy and cooler, as it should be in winter!