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Science
Who would suspect that the source of so much good old fashioned fun would have such a poetic name? Beautiful Swimmer is translated from the scientific name given to the Atlantic Blue Crab - known around these parts as the Maryland Blue Crab.
- The Blue Crab is a member of the swimming crab family, Portunidae.
- Crabs only swim and walk from side to side rather than forward or backward.
- Crabs are predators and scavengers - they eat mostly live and dead fish, clams, and snails. But they also will eat eelgrass, sea lettuce, and decayed vegetation.
- Crabs will eat other crabs when they can not find anything else. Scientists say this is nature's way of population control.
- Maryland Blue Crabs are bottom dwellers living in the Atlantic ocean and in the salty and brackish waters of the coastal and Chesapeake bays.
- "Cancer" is the Latin word for crab. People who study crabs are therefore called carcinologists, which causes a lot of confusion. Doctors treating the disease of cancer are oncologists.
There is a wealth of information online about this topic:
General - Educational
Blue Crab Facts
Chesapeake Bay Program - Blue Crabs
Maryland State Crustacean - Blue Crab
Maryland Sea Grant
How a Blue Crab Changes as It Grows
Encyclopedia.com
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001
Blue Crabs - St. Petersburg Times
Blue Claws: Crabbing in New Jersey
New Jersey Scuba Diver - Marine Biology - Crustaceans: Crabs
The Blue Crab Home Page
Blue Crabs - South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
Scientific Study
Blue Crab Ecology Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research, Oxford, Maryland
University of Delaware Graduate College of Marine Studies
Chesapeake Bay Life > Benthos > Blue Crab
Chesapeake Bay Commission - The Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
North Carolina Department of Fisheries
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