Kamaboko: Taking Fake Crab to Another Level

I just read an article about surimi and how the guy who established it in the US (trying to make a “hot dog of the sea” apparently) is trying to make its production better. Read it here.

I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about surimi since I was an observer in a plant that produced it. (Which was almost 10 years ago.) But I was wrong!

I knew that surimi is made from ground up pollock and other fishes. It’s often died to look like crab legs and used in California rolls for people who want sushi but don’t want raw fish but somehow logs of pulverized steamed fish are OK.

^Not real crab, y'all

What I didn’t know is that it has another name: kamaboko. And it is had been around for centuries! It was eaten by samurai and nobility – there’s even a Kamaboko Museum dedicated to “Artisinal Samurai Seafood”.

What’s more fun is that it is colorful and, dare I say it, CUTE! Just check these out:

I was sort of already familiar with these spirally numbers 

But look at these ramen bowl additions! 

 And ^this^ little Rilakkuma-themed meal from...

 ... ^these^ loaves of steamed fish paste!

 So. Many. Designs!

You can take classes on how to make these awesome treats at the Kamaboko Museum, too!

You guys, I kind of fell down the kamaboko rabbit hole with this. There are videos you can watch on how to shape your rolls into flowers and bunnies. I broke my blog-writing hiatus simply because I needed to share this fish art with you all! And while the surimi dude that sent me on this Pinterest-image-searching bonanza works on reducing food waste during production, I'd lobby hard for also increasing cuteness in design.

Oh snow!

The snow crab population in the eastern Bering Sea is experiencing a decline which affected the 2016/2017 fishery, which I reported here. That fishery is just now finishing up with the first boat loaded and headed home (shared by the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers). How that fishery performed and how that population is affected will have cascading impacts on market prices, new snow crab products (like McDonald's snow crab sandwich), next year's population health, and next year's fishery catch limits.

That's the Alaska side. What about Canada's snow crab fishery? They're probably doing good, eh? I mean, they have this guy:

(source: New York Times)

Sadly, even Justin Trudeau can't help the snow crabs. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) just released their snow crab stock assessment which shows that the biomass of legal crab for the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery has declined by 80% since 2013.

EIGHTY PERCENT!!!

You guys. That's so bad. As Darrell Mullowney of the DFO says, "It's not a good news story." Or as Keith Sullivan of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union says, "It's terrible, terrible news for people in the industry." Yeah man, terrible for the industry AND terrible for the crabs and their ecosystem. Remember, humans aren't the only ones who like to eat snow crabs. Atlantic cods do too, and they haven't really been living high on the hog anyway (what with its collapse in 1992).

Atlantic cod Gadus morhua (source: Joachim S. Müller)

So it seems that our Bering Sea opies aren't the only ones facing declines. Again, Mullowney commented on the global scale of depressed snow crab stocks, particularly in their southern most areas: "The magnitude of this in terms of socioeconomics I can't really quantify." We'll have to wait and see.

This is testing my resolve, y'all

A while back I wrote a pretty honest blog about my feelings regarding lobster rolls. TL/DR: they're trash. Cut to last week when I saw this:

McDonald's is testing out a "snow crab sandwich" in San Francisco and I have SO MANY QUESTIONS!

1. YAY snow crab!

2. Wait, is it really snow crab Chionoecetes opilio? "Snow crab" could be Chionoecetes bairdi aka Tanner crab, or something else.

3. Is it 100% "snow crab" or a mix like those nasty, nasty lobster rolls?

4. Shoot, is this just another waste of good meat that should be happily dipped in garlic butter? Do I hold crab, even snow crab, to the same high standard of lobster? Because I love crab dip so much, do I really have room to judge a crab sandwich? (No. The answer is No.)

5. Opies and Tanners are having a rough time, population-wise, in the Bering Sea, with both stocks in decline and the Tanner fishery not even opened. If this sandwich does well, how will the demand of a fast food empire affect the snow crab market? Bering Sea opilio price-per-pound is already high (over $8.00 compared to last year's $5.90) because of the decline in population and subsequent decline in fishery production.

If you are in the Bay Area and are feeling adventurous, try out the new sandwich and let me know what you think!

Big Trouble in Little Bering Sea

Oh man, you guys. This is a doozy.

I posted a brief Tanner crab (Chionoecetes bairdi) update from Alaska Department of Fish and Game yesterday on Facebook. TL;DR - the Bering Sea fishery for bairdis is closed for the 2016/2017 season.

The bairdi fishery in the Bering Sea has had a rocky past with openings and closures fluctuating throughout the years, but it was starting to look good again even as recently as 2015! The fishery was closed from 1997 - 2004, open fully 2006 - 2009, closed again from 2010 - 2013, then open fully until 2015 with high catches and high vessel participation (112 vessels in the 2015/2016 season compared to 32 in 2013/2014).

from the 2016 crab SAFE data

You can read all about the fishery in the latest Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands stock assessment and fishery management report (in nerd lingo - the crab SAFE), which is put out by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Here's a link to the Crab Plan Team with all their fun reports, and this link will send you to the current Council meeting (happening now) where you can find the 2016 crab SAFE in the Agenda. It's listed under "C. Major Issues/Final Action Items" as the first item.

OK, so that's bairdi, but you all know I really love me some opies. How are they doing?

Not good. ADF&G announced that Bering Sea snow crab will be open this year (October 15th, as usual) but with the lowest total allowable catch (TAC) in 45 years. The low TAC, at 21.57 million pounds, is  nearly HALF of what it was last year (40.57 million pounds)! Why? Because surveys of the crabs have shown a decline in the number of mature males out there (who we like to eat) AND mature females out there (who make the babies).

from the 2016 crab SAFE data

This low baby-makin' biomass means potentially fewer adults in the future. That's why management has to be so conservative to allow for the crabs to do their business and replenish the stock. But for the moment it also means low catches and A LOT less money for our crab fishermen, processors, and on down the line. The other thing fishermen have to worry about is any accidental retention of bairdis since that fishery is closed, making these crab-cousins prohibited.

opilio up top, bairdi on bottom

Good luck, crabs!

Shrimp Publication!

Remember WAY back in the day when I shared these photos of shrimp embryos?

spot shrimp and coonstripe shrimp embryos

I was processing shrimp collected from different sites around Port Valdez for hydrocarbon analysis. Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are simply compounds made up of hydrogen and carbon that occur in crude oil. They = not so good for human consumption, or for animals, or for nature in general (see the Exxon Valdex Oil Spill). So this project looked at whether or not shrimp collected near oil tanker operations were safe to eat. My role was properly dissecting the shrimp and separating them by body part - tails (the most-often eaten item), heads (sucked on - not my style), and eggs (oy, I'll get to this one). And now the results have been published! Woo!

pink shrimp embryos

Let's cut to the chase: the majority of everything was safe with the small exception of eggs! ... And here's where I get on my soapbox: we shouldn't be harvesting reproductive females in any fishery that we hope can be sustainable. The lobstermen on the East Coast know this and v-notch the tails of reproductive female lobsters before returning them so that (a) they have a chance to hatch those delicious babies and (b) even when they're not gravid (showing eggs on the underside of their tails), it's known that these gals can get the job done for future years of successful harvests. Long story short - you shouldn't be eating the potentially tainted shrimp eggs from Port Valdez anyway! (Honestly, most shrimp you buy in general are terrible [high bycatch in trawl shrimping, pollution from farmed shrimp, slavery in shrimp processing, etc.] so unless you or your friend are catching shrimp using pots, you should just avoid 'em.)

(Disclaimer: that's just my opinion, well thought out though it may be, and doesn't reflect the opinion of any organization for which I've done research.)

Lobster rolls are a waste of time, money, and lobsters

I've said it before and I'll say it again: lobster rolls are a waste of stomach space. Why spend money on lobster that's drowned in mayonnaise and miscellaneous spices and thrown on a bun when you could have fresh boiled lobster with liquid gold aka melted butter? Isn't the point of eating lobster to enjoy the taste of lobster? If you want mayo on a bun there are so many better things to eat: BLTs for example! (PS, I feel the same way about lobster macaroni and cheese. Just, no.)

leave the lobster roll, take the fried clams

(does anyone else wish they were cannoli?)
(photo source: yelp)

Where is this rant coming from? Recently different groups have been cracking down on seafood fraud - the mislabeling of food as higher quality products. For example, an Oceana study found that 43% of salmon sold in restaurants and grocery stores from places like New York and Chicago were mislabeled, and the most common wrongful ID was calling farmed salmon "wild-caught". That's a HUGE no-no for this wild-caught Alaskan salmon-loving gal!

Where lobster rolls come in is that another study by Inside Edition showed that many restaurants selling lobster rolls, lobster ravioli, and other heavily-processed lobster dishes are actually serving cheap lobster substitutes like "langostino" (aka squat lobsters, which you may know are more closely related to crabs than true lobsters). Less egregious but equally shady is serving actual lobster cut with other things like whiting, a common name for several white-meat fish like pollock or hake.

In the investigation, one third of the tested "lobster" meat was mislabelled! And the thing is, most people probably couldn't tell because their "lobster" was smothered in mayo! So I don't feel too bad for people who were bamboozled, but I think it's wrong nonetheless. An interesting point that was raised during this investigation is that one restaurateur said they did nothing wrong with mixing fish in to their lobster roll: (A) some people just use a frozen pre-mixed melange of seafood, of which lobster makes up an unknown percentage, for their lobster rolls, and (B) mixing lobster with things like surimi (that fake crab meat made from ground up pollock) and selling it as "lobster salad" should just imply to you, the costumer, that you're getting more than what you're paying for (and by "more" I mean "less"). And I'm not really knocking surimi - I like California rolls as much as the next person, and I was an observer in a fish processing plant that made surimi, so I've seen it from start to finish!

Mmmm, I can still smell the ground pollock from here!

Anyway, do yourself a favor: next time you want lobster, just order the whole thing with a side of garlic butter, put on a bib, and enjoy pure crustaceany goodness!

this is how you do it! (shananana-na-nana)

(photo from Honestly Yum)

Caution for California crab lovers

A nasty little algae has been blooming like crazy lately (thanks, global warming!) and it's having some pretty serious consequences for Dungeness-loving consumers in California. The diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia sp., produces domoic acid, and at the high productivity rate it's experiencing because of warmer ocean conditions, the domoic acid is startin' trouble. When consumed at high concentrations, domoic acid can cause seizures, comas, and death! Yikes! It also causes short-term memory loss, so when people (or animals) get it from eating shellfish, it's known as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. (Remember learning about Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning here?) The domoic acid bioaccumulates in filter feeders like clams, mussels, and crabs (!!!) who just want to munch on some phytoplankton.

"Lay off me, I'm starving!" - Metacarcinus magister (PC Brian Feulner)

Speaking of crabs, California has closed its recreational and commercial crab seasons for both Dungeness and rock crabs because of this domoic acid contamination! This closure not only affects consumers (in a good way, really, because DEATH), but also the fishermen themselves who rely on these crabs for their livelihood. So it's kinda a lose-lose situation at the moment: fishermen lose money and their ability to pay their bills-bills-bills, or consumers run the risk of short-term memory loss, paralysis, and death.

This is the algae producing the acid that has halted #dungeness crab season. Here come the researchers… pic.twitter.com/1RcddYyj4C

— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) November 10, 2015

How realistic is this concern? Well, dead sea otters have been reported with domoic acid in their systems, several large whales have washed up dead and the toxic diatom is a suspect (PS, the dog in the 3rd picture is adorable!), and even this little sea lion pup was poisoned in utero:

little Danzig in recovery, lucky guy! (PC Paul Chinn, The Chronicle)

Cuteness aside, it's an issue that needs to be monitored, and all my dungie-loving people out there should remain cautious about where your crab were caught and how they were prepared!

Wearable crabs

OK, you know I love me some good crab swag (see exhibit A (for 'awesome', and 'Amelia')), but a new company is taking crab swag up a notch! Tidal Vision is going to take the old carapaces of snow crabs and turn them into shirts and other clothes! Doesn't that sound amazing?!? And strange, potentially smelly, and likely scratchy?

not that Maru minds...

Nope, don't worry: Tidal Vision assures that the fabric feels similar to cotton. And a bonus is that it has natural anti-bacterial and -microbial properties! Because of those properties, they're marketing the shirts as performance wear called "Chitoskin". Brilliant!

So what is chitosan, you're asking? Chitosan comes from chitin, which is what crustacean shells are made of. By treating chitin with sodium hydroxide (NaOH aka lye), you get chitosan! Those of you who took high school chemistry may remember using sodium hydroxide to increase the pH of an acidic solution. Mmmm, titrations!

ANYWAY, Tidal Vision is using snow crab shells, as well as salmon skins for wallets and belts, to reduce waste from the fisheries. That's something I can definitely wear proudly!

(from Tidal Vision)

OH MY GOSH, by the way, I guess the whole cat-in-a-crab-hat thing happens A LOT in Japan! I will post photos of my cats if I get them wearing Dungies!

Crab Carpet!

Red tuna crabs (Pleuroncodes planipes) have washed up on Californian shores!

(photo from here)

Cue the line for cocktail sauce! These little crabs are actually squat lobsters (similar to my favorite squat lobster, the yeti crab), and are also called 'langostilla'. They get the name 'tuna crab' because they're a favorite meal for tuna! (Mmmm, crab-stuffed tuna...) Anyways, warm ocean currents may have carried them too close to shore for these little guys to avoid getting beached, but this happens sometimes when they swarm together in order to mate. So... that didn't go so well for them...

(photo: John Gibbins)

Read more about other crab strandings here and here, and here for krill!

long lost family members

When you think of lobster relatives you probably picture crabs and shrimp, not cockroaches and dragonflies. But it turns out that they may be more closely related than we originally thought! Researchers recently came together during the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting to discuss a reorganization of the family tree. Basically, instead of insects and crustaceans being separate branches, they may be part of the same branch called 'Pancrustacea':

This special symposium was co-organized by my Master's advisor friend, Sherry Tamone! In the past, researchers have noticed similarities between insects and crustaceans, but their methods for studying them differed. There are more genetic resources for insects while crustacean researchers focus on hormones (like me!). But, using this symposium as an example, they're coming together to find similarities. Take methyl farnesoate and insect juvenile hormone: they control growth and maturation in crustaceans and insects, respectively, but are inactive in their arthropod counter part. The link is that production of both are limited by the same enzymes!

sesquiterpenoids represent!

As Sherry says, "We should get comfortable eating crickets. It's all one big group." You can read more in Science and check out abstracts from the symposium here.

Crabs rock!

Check out this awesome Alaskan rock formation:

Choris Peninsula, Kotzebue Sound "Crab Claw"

66 16.020 N, 161 54.520 W

It's from the Alaska ShoreZone Coastal Mapping and Imagery program, which has tasked itself with documenting geographic and biological resources along the 6,640 miles of Alaskan coastline! (That's more miles than the rest of the coastal states combined!) From the ShoreZone description of this shot: "One of the few rock outcrops in Kotzebue Sound, near the south end of the Choris Peninsula. The bedrock is resistant to erosion and stands as near vertical rock cliffs." Now that's a large claw if ever I saw one!

(If you watch this video, you can see the helicopter footage of the Crab Claw at 42:40!)

New year, new crab!

Well, kind of. Recently a woman in Honolulu noticed this guy walking down the street:

oh hey there!

Normally seeing a crab in Hawaii wouldn't be weird. But this guy is a coconut crab (remember learning about them here) and they are invasive in Hawaii. It might have just showed up for vacation, but what's more likely is that someone had bought the crab in hopes of making a tasty dinner - can you blame it for trying to run away!?!?

Just as a note, in the video (on the Huffington Post link) they keep saying how dangerous the crabs are because of their strong claws. Coconut crabs can break through coconuts and were rumored to crack skulls of sleepy castaways, but I'm not sure how dangerous they truly are. So here's the lesson: rumors will follow you, coconut crab. You may have escaped being dinner (it will now live at the Honolulu Zoo), but you can't escape the sins of your father! (Regardless, getting pinched by a small mud crab can hurt so I'd avoid these claws!)

National Seafood Month

Many of you know I LOVE October. I continually sing, "It's the most wonderful tiiiiime of the yeeeeear!" and I'm not talkin' about Christmas, y'all! Among all the reasons I love October (fall colors, Halloween, crab season openers), I just learned it's also National Seafood Month! Yes, not only should you be celebrating everything pumpkin, but also everything locally harvested from Alaskan waters! And to learn more about local seafood, you can read this Seafood 101 pamphlet. The link will bring you to the layout and you can zoom in to read the different articles. Who knows, it may even inspire your next Halloween costume:

"Bering Sea or bust!"

Happy National Seafood Month!

I'm getting published!

Hey there! I've been working on this for a little bit the last 6 years (grad school + coming to terms with publishing my Master's thesis while starting a 'real' job...) but it's finally almost here:

Relationship of molting, gonadosomatic index, and methyl farnesoate

in male snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) from the eastern Bering Sea

It's been accepted for publication in the Journal of Crustacean Biology and you can read the abstract from the advanced article here. To say I'm pretty pumped would be an understatement! I've had cod and pollock and humpback whales swimming through my brain so much lately that it's nice to get crabby once more! Not like this:

But more like this:

from here via here

Thanks, crabs, I couldn't have done it without you!

a little extra crab with this king

My friend was out on a crab survey this summer and spotted this guy:

Paralithodes camtschaticus

Nothing out of the ordinary, right? EXCEPT FOR THESE:

WHAT?!?!?

We've seen extra appendages before (here and here). They most often are a result of some trauma to that leg that the crab's physiology tries to heal through regeneration (remember, crabs can rebuild entire legs!) that goes awry. When my friend posted these photos, someone asked if they were mobile or able to move independently. While I wasn't there, allow me to speculate: these bonus crab bits are just that. Bonus. The crab can't control their movement (you can see that they don't have actual joints, just the impression) and if the leg gets dropped for whatever reason and is regenerated, it likely won't have those mutations the second time around. BUT it would be cool if they could move, because imagine how much more scary that would make this guy:

"I pinch, twice!" - mutant crab

Katie, please feel free to let me know if I'm wrong! (Fingers crossed!)

You're stressing us out, man!

Remember when we learned that crustaceans actually feel pain here? In short, scientists offered crabs two shelters: one normal and one that delivered a shock. After being exposed to the electric shelter, the crabs had a learned response to avoid that sensation (presumably pain) and only choose the normal shelter.

it's electric!

Well, stemming from that research, scientists are now learning that crustaceans may feel anxiety too! I mean, it's not too shocking (I know...) that electrocuting  an animal would stress it out, in our human understanding of the phrase, but scientists are observing behaviors that can be attributed to a stressed response. To test for anxiety in crustaceans, scientists exposed some crayfish to an electric field then put them in the test environment. The environment itself had no secret shocks, but rather had different light treatments: light places and dark places. All animals that weren't shocked before placement wandered around in both the light and dark environments, as if they hadn't a care in the world! All animals who were electrocuted prior to placement chose to stay in the dark places - in the wild this would be like them finding cover and hiding. They had experienced something that stressed them, so they were staying away from a threatening, exposed place!

"man, you cray!" - 'stressed' crayfish

This, along with some physiological work the researchers did as well, means that instead of calling them "stressed", I can take away the air quotes that indicate I'm just anthropomorphizing their behavior and call them stressed!

Not anymore, Dr. Evil. Not anymore.

Come with Crabster if you want to live!

A lot of times when I see advances in robotic technology I usually go into a panic about the impending robot apocalypse that's sure to follow. HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING!?!?!?!

"I want to dance on your bones!" - every robot, I assume

BUT, when I saw the Crabster CR200, my heart instantly melted!

The Crabster is a creation from the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology designed to, you guessed it, walk on the ocean floor! This little fellow can go where propeller-driven ROVs can't and doesn't kick up as much debris, so the video footage captured by its ELEVEN cameras can be clearer with our little crab-like friend. This link had two videos of the Crabster in action, so check it out!

It's like the large, potentially harmful, but still adorable version of these guys I bought my California nieces, so if Aunt Molly approves, so should you!

What am I doing here?

I mentioned last year that I was going to keep track of the keyword searches that bring people to Snow Crab Love,  because some of them were frankly strange. Here are the top 5 non-crab-related searches that brought people here and, I'm guessing, left them asking, "What am I doing here!?!?"

1. Tina Turner

Well, obviously!

2. Veggies and Dip in Bread

This one also makes sense: the internet LOVES carbs and I made a carb-tastic appetizer for a NOAA potluck that could easily be morphed into a crab-themed treat:

3. Flamingos

flamingos get their pink hue from eating brine shrimp!

4. Kivalina, Alaska

Remember when there was the secret of the (orange) ooze? It ended up not being of the crustacean persuasion, but the mystery was fun while it lasted (and who doesn't love a TMNT reference?)!

the "orange tide" ended up being spores

5. Dead Iguana Pictures

I seriously have no idea (a) why anyone would search that and (b) why that search word would bring people to my blog MULTIPLE times!

Other fun searches were "Captain Picard", "Baby Beagle Costumes", "If I only had a brain", and "Kelsey Grammar" (what?).

this dog! it gets me every time!

What brought you here?

Are you strong enough to be my shell?

Is anyone else singing Sheryl Crow right now? Just me?

It's Science Fair time up here in Juneau!!! That means data has been collected, numbers have been crunched, and posters are being put together for the big presentation this weekend! This will be my third year judging and I'm so excited to see all the projects the high school students have come up with this year!

Last year I was also a mentor (mentioned here) but sadly my student didn't end up presenting her results. It was sad in two ways: (1) she was pretty pumped about the project, but had double-booked the weekend because she was also super involved in a lot of school activities (go get 'em!), so it was too bad she didn't get to present her work. (2) This experiment involved live animals, so had I known she wouldn't complete the program, I wouldn't have mentored this type of project. I take working with animals very seriously and take it to heart if/when any of the animals in my care die.

this seems silly, but remember my snow crab quilt

with a crab to honor each of my study animals?

That being said, I still want to present the fun little project I had the opportunity to participate in since it hasn't been shared yet! Hermit crabs depend on gastropod shells to protect their soft, delicate abdomens. Because of this need for protection, shell strength is an important variable for them when choosing which shell to inhabit. Given the choice in normal situations, it's been observed that hermit crabs will choose intact shells over damaged ones, since the damaged ones would be easier to break into by their predators. We wondered how their shell choice might differ in differing situations: will they make the same choice under stress? How about if they think there are a bunch of potential shells around - will they be as choosy initially? Will they still worry about shell strength???

To test this question, we took hairy hermit crabs, Pagarus hirsutiusculus, that were being housed at the University of Alaska Southeast wet lab and offered them two shells: one intact, one with a tiny hole. When giving the crabs an opportunity to make this choice, we took advantage of their use of chemical cues and exposed them to different "smelling" water. We exposed some of the hermit crabs to water that smelled like a known predator, the Dungeness crab, to act as the stress treatment. We exposed others to water that smelled like dead snails to mimic a gastropod predation event, or a time when several snails are being eaten and therefore leaving their shells up for grabs. We finally had a control treatment where the hermit crabs made their choice in the same water that had been pumping through their holding tanks.

hello!

In order to encourage shell selection, we had to gently remove the hermits from their original shells (crazy easy to do without any harm to the crabs!). We saved their original shell so that they could move back into it when the trial was finished. We also measured their original shell's weight so that we could offer them test shells of similar size/weight (we didn't want to give a big crab a small shell!).

science! collecting naked crab weights!

We measured the time it took for them to approach a shell, the time it took for them to enter a shell, and their shell selection. We took note if they changed which shell they chose too, just in case any of them had buyer's remorse.

choices choices: the two shells offered are from the same species of snail,

but one is damaged goods and one seems shiny and new

(the small white thing in the leftmost part of the tank is a bit of gravel)

What did we find? For all treatments, the hermit crabs chose the intact shells over the damaged shells. This wasn't too shocking, but it was still interesting to see that, even under stress (Dungeness-scent) or at leisure (dead snail-scent), they still made the same basic decision.

more hermit crabs chose intact shells than damaged shells

and rarely changed their minds, although one crab switched from

an intact shell to damaged one in the predator treatment...

The time it took for the crabs to approach a shell and enter it were very similar. It seemed like some of the crabs would just wander around the tank for the most part and sense the shells by touch rather than sight. Once they touched a shell, they would hurry their little tushes into it! The time it took for them to find the shells was roughly the same across all treatments (ie "there was no significant difference in average time for first approach or shell entry across treatments (ANOVA, p > 0.05)").

get in there!!! (see his little rhizocephalan?)

The main thing: IT WAS FUN! Yes, it was several hours in the lab and, yes, I'm still sad that it wasn't presented at the fair, but it was fun being a mentor and doing this crabby side-project!