Crab zoea found in Raritan Bay on June 21, 2011.

Crabs do not begin life as the macroscopic forms with claws that we all know and love!  Crab eggs hatch into zoea larvae that drift in the ocean currents as plankton.  As the juvenile crab grows in size, it goes through a series of molts.  At each molt, more segments are added and the feathered appendages are replaced by clawed limbs.  We have been sampling and identifying the plankton in Raritan Bay, NJ for over a year, and since this system is full of crabs representing a number of different species, we expected to find crab zoea in the plankton samples.  We were very disappointed not to find ANY for the first 14 months of our research in Raritan Bay…until this past June when we were able to identify the larval stages of at least 2 different species of crabs.  Yay!