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The Daily Bucket - otter & crab, high tide [1]

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Date: 2023-03-02

February 2023

Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest

Winter days can be sunny sometimes in the Pacific Northwest, as it was on February 21st. Cold, in the 30s, and breezy, but in the ocean that doesn’t matter as much. The local River otter was more limited by the high tide than the weather. His preferred lunching spot, Otter Rock, was nearly overtopped by the tide. But he hauled his big prey of the morning to its highest point, and didn’t seem to mind getting intermittently swished by waves.

As I’ve mentioned in the Bucket before, otters swallow most of their fish and crab prey directly on surfacing, floating out in mid water, but occasionally they catch something that needs many bites. That’s when they swim it to a “table”, on the beach, a rock, a dock, or a boat. In this bay, otters prefer Otter Rock to the beach, probably because it’s up high and safe from critters: good visibility and safe. This afternoon Mr Otter had caught a pretty good sized Dungeness crab.

Otter making a beeline for the rock

At low tide the top of the rock is 5 feet above the beach

Big jaws, sharp teeth and clever hands

Letting gravity do the work when you have no fork

Otters have a protocol for eating crab, which appears very efficient. First they eat the legs so the crab can’t crawl away I guess. Then they separate the top and bottom of the carapace, and consume the contents in a few swift bites. In 5 minutes, only the crab’s upper carapace remains, along with a few fragments.

Dungeness crabs, incidentally, are carnivorous too:

….their diet can include shrimp, mussels, small crabs, clams and worms. Dungeness crabs are foragers. They scavenge along the sea floor for organisms that live partly or completely buried in the sand. Cannibalism may occur, particularly on young crabs during the first weeks after settlement to the bottom, or on newly molted crabs.

www.nps.gov/...

After finishing the crab lunch, otter slides back into the water, and away.

Here’s a 1½ minute video of the otter, postprandial:



Evidently the crab filled him up for the moment and it was time for a nap. The stairs make it easy to get up the side of the bluff, where there’s a den. I’ve seen him go up there fairly often.

Graceful swimmer

Stairs up the bluff, some nice woods beyond. Note the deciduous trees to the left of the stairs: those are Red Alders, which are pinking up. Catkins maturing. Pollen season.

🦀

THE DAILY BUCKET IS A NATURE REFUGE. WE AMICABLY DISCUSS ANIMALS, WEATHER, CLIMATE, SOIL, PLANTS, WATERS AND NOTE LIFE’S PATTERNS. WE INVITE YOU TO NOTE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING AROUND YOU IN YOUR OWN PART OF THE WORLD, AND TO SHARE YOUR OBSERVATIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/2/2155760/-The-Daily-Bucket-otter-amp-crab-high-tide

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