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Journalism of Courage
Anyone who has walked on a beach must have noticed them: those neat, spiral patterns on the sand made out of tiny balls of sand, emanating from a central hub or hole, looking for all the world like sand rangoli. And if you’ve had the patience to stick around, you might have seen the artists responsible: tiny crabs that vanish into the hole or burrow, the second they know their artwork is under scrutiny (can’t be too careful these days, you could be from the ED). And you, being a crass human, usually just walk on — and often right over these lovely designs. I did too until (thanks to Sejal Mehta’s Superpowers on the Shore — Penguin Viking) I began to look closer and dig deeper. I still have to hunker down and spend quality time in yogic silence, watching these little crabs, but what I did find out about them has whetted my interest in them no end.
First, is their delightful name: sand bubbler crabs. You imagine this would be because they blow bubbles or something, but not quite. But what they do, do (literally a doo-doo) is fascinating enough. They’re just 1 cm across their carapace, and if you look closely enough, orange and sky blue. They emerge from their burrows at low tide, and with their claws fastidiously begin picking up particles of sand and mumble them around in their mouths, extracting whatever natural goodness and nutrition from the microscopic particles of plankton, and other organic matter sticking to the particle. In nature, nothing, no matter how miniscule, is wasted. Once done, the particle is rolled into a ball — around 2-3 cm across and cast away. Now, if you’ve ever made dough, you know it has to be dampened before you can shape it: so too with the sand bubbler: that sand particle has to be dampened. For this, it obtains water from its body. And while it is busy mumbling and shaping little sand balls, it breathes through permeable ‘gas windows’ in its thighs.
The little sand balls ensure that the crabs know what sand they have processed and don’t waste time on them again. They are neatly arranged in those rangoli patterns with radial spokes in between — which serve as a clear runway in case the crab has to beat a hasty retreat from a predatory bird or the ED. It will feed until the tide turns and then hunkers down in its burrow and this is where the bubble comes into the picture. It will arrange blobs of sand around the entrance like an Eskimo arranges blocks of ice while constructing an igloo — and an air bubble is trapped in the top half of this sand igloo — hence the moniker — enabling it to breathe as the tide rushes over it.
Scientists, of course, like the paparazzi, are never satisfied until they’ve laid bare the sex lives of whatever they are investigating. And with sand bubbler crabs, too like in many species, it seems to be a male-dominated society. Wandering males will pounce on resident ladies, one after another: I keep imagining them barging into the burrow, behaving appallingly, exiting and diving down into the burrow next door for a repeat performance, like a serial sex offender! Resident males run after any ladies out for a stroll and capture them. And they will make out both in their burrows and, like the hanky-panky that goes on, on beaches worldwide out on the sand. Scientists say, ‘making love on the hot sands’ results in more babies (can you imagine the sort of experiment that must have been designed to arrive at this conclusion?). Around the beaches of the Indo-Pacific region, there are said to be around 59 species of sand bubblers.
Soldier crabs, which also make rangoli patterns on the sand, are close cousins of sand bubblers, and at 2.5 cm across their carapace, larger. They too are sky blue, hold their front claws vertically and can, apparently unlike other crabs, walk in a straight line. (Imagine barking ‘Forward march!’ to those other guys and watching them all set off perpendicularly left, right — literally!) Soldier crabs too emerge when the tide goes out and the males accumulate in large ‘armies’ and head in a straight line towards the tide line to feed. The biggest males lead the troop because they have longer legs and walk faster. I do remember noticing a ‘moving carpet’ phenomenon which I saw while walking on Morjim beach in Goa, recently, but the moment I moved, it froze and vanished. It was like a shape-shifting kind of experience and I’m wondering if those were soldier crabs. Soldier crabs have a unique way of digging themselves in: They dig with the legs on one side of their body, while the legs on the other walk backwards, causing them to corkscrew their way down. Even the little sand bubblers do the vanishing trick very effectively and I remember them bamboosling our Boxer, Bambi under whose nose, literally they kept disappearing, leaving her frowning away.
To check them out, you really need to be silent and still and have a lot of patience (big city hustling will not do) Maybe just hunker down and wait until they have the confidence to pop out of their burrows, take a look around and then resume picking up particles of sand. Who knows, like those voyeuristic scientists, you too may see something that makes your eyes pop. William Blake wrote, ‘To see the world in a grain of sand…’ Well, maybe that and a lot more!
