Watch free video Slower Fiddler Crabs Beach

Fiddler crabs feeding at low tide. Imagine the impact of the BP oil spill on populations further west along the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I wonder how and if they have recovered.

This is on a narrow barrier island. It appears to me that the crabs leave their burrows near low tide and march in mass along the beach until they find a breach in the layer of flotsam and grass that borders the beach. There they flood onto the tidal flats to feed. There appears to be a layer of algae attached to the sand about 25 yards out that they migrate towards at the lowest stage of the tide. I wonder if they are vegetarian.