“Save the Blue Crab”

1. “Save the Blue Crab” The body: Blue crabs have a hard exoskeleton. An exoskeleton is like a shield on the outside of the crabs body. Blue crabs grow up to 9 inches long. They have 10 walking legs. Male crabs look different from female crabs. When you look under a crab, a male crab has a V shape on it stomach. A female crab has a U shape.

2. Molting: Just like snakes shed a skin, so do crabs. When crabs grow, their exoskeleton gets too tight and doesn’t fit anymore. It comes off and a new skin grows. It takes 2-4 days for the skin to come off. Exoskeleton coming off

3. Diet and Behavior: Crabs walk around eating food as they go. Blue crabs eat clams, oysters, dead fish and sometimes smaller crabs. Blue crabs can be aggressive. This means they sometime attack each other or fight.

4. Crab Habitat: Crabs like to live on the bottom of a body of water. They sleep in hiding during the months of November – March. Crabs can live in both fresh water and salt water. Most blue crabs live in the US Atlantic and gulf coasts.

5. “Crab Crisis”: There is a problem with the blue crabs. There are not a lot of crabs left. The crabs are few because the bay has too many nutrients. Water gets too many nutrients when pollution gets into it. Types of pollution that hurt the water are fertilizer, and gas. Ways to make the water cleaner are to carpool, and not use lawn fertilizer. I we can make water cleaner, then there will be more crabs.