Techniques for Catching Sea Creatures

Last Thursday and Friday I went to Menemsha.  I have two new techniques to teach you.  One technique is sand sweeping.  You drag a net along the sandy bottom of the ocean to pick up a lot of sand.  While holding the net in the water, you wiggle it back and forth until all of the sand falls through.  You will probably find lots of creatures in your net. This technique helped me catch a lot of baby lady crabs.  The other technique is picking up big clusters of sea plants laying on the sand in the water.  You pick through the plants to find creatures.  We caught 31 crabs between the two days.  We mostly caught baby crabs.  We caught lots of different species of crabs including: spider crabs, black fingered mud crabs, a baby horseshoe crab, Asian shore crabs, lady crabs, and hermit crabs.  Menemsha is fun because there are lots of cool creatures to catch.

This is a baby lady crab.  You can see the paddles on his back legs. You can also tell this is a lady crab because it has spots.

This is a baby black fingered mud crab.  You can see the black tips on his claws.  They also have yellow on their claws.

This is a baby horseshoe crab.  This is the first time I personally caught a horseshoe crab at Menemsha.

This is a black fingered mud crab.  To flip over he pushed back and pulled forward.

We caught a 3 1/2 inch baby flounder or fluke.  They are hard to catch because they blend in with the sand.  

Fluke and founders are both flat fish.  Both of his eyes are on one side of its body.  

This is the back of the fish.

This is a video a fluke or a flounder and baby lady crab swimming in a bucket.  You can observe how they move in the water.

This fluke or flounder is swimming in very shallow water.  They swim on the bottom so they can camouflage with the sand.