They live under your lawn, near the sea, and they’re ravaging Tammy Walshon’s backyard forcing her and her husband to play a sort of whack-a-crab at their Jupiter home.
“We just keep filling (the holes) in and the (land crabs just) keep digging them out,” she said. “We just keep the underbrush as short as we can.”
The land crab is nocturnal, eating anything from tree roots to rotting fish. They dig just deep enough to reach the water table.
“They do need the wet their gills just like any crab would but they don’t necessarily need to go into the water,” said Amanda Nalley, an FWC spokesperson.
The blue land crab hugs the coast, and live where the water is warm enough to breed. In the United States, It hasn’t been seen north of Vero Beach.
Tammy was originally looking for possible solutions, but they’re protected from July 1 to Oct. 31.
But she also has a place on the Bahamas, where the land crab is abundant.
“They’re great, they’re a delicacy, we eat them down there. Crab and rice. Crab and dough boiled crab. Baked stuffed crab. We enjoy them down there," she says.
Harvesting season for the land crab starts Nov. 1