Most of the Coenobita brevimanus, a species of land hermit crabs, in the Sansiantai area (三仙台) in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) are using plastic bottle caps as shells, a Tainan-based marine biologist said on Sunday.
Chiu Yu-wen (邱郁文), a researcher at National Cheng Kung University’s Center for Research in Water Science and Technology, said he last week traveled to the area to conduct research on hermit crabs and discovered that among the 14 Coenobita brevimanus that he encountered, most of them were using plastic bottle caps as shells.
Even the few crabs that had shells were carrying ones that were either damaged or too small to fully protect their bodies, he said.
Photo courtesy of Chiu Yu-wen
The carapace of the Coenobita brevimanus can measure up to 45mm, Chiu said, adding that they are the second-largest species of hermit crabs in Taiwan.
Unlike natural shells, plastic bottle caps and damaged shells do not provide hermit crabs with an effective and confined shelter for defense, Chiu said.
Apart from being unable to effectively defend themselves against predators, hermit crabs that use plastic bottle caps as shells or damaged shells are also unable to prevent water from evaporating from their bodies, let alone reproduce during the breeding season, he said.
Hermit crabs are also unable to steadily hook onto plastic bottle caps using their abdominal appendages due to the smooth liner inside the caps, he added.
Chiu said that part of the problem is that when edible shellfish are consumed at restaurants, empty shells are not returned to the shores, thereby creating an insufficient supply of shells for hermit crabs.
Hermit crabs on other shores face similar problems, he added.
Due to their proximity to farms and windbreaks, Tainan’s hermit crabs can substitute the shells of shellfish with the shells of the Lissachatina fulica, a species of land snail also known as the giant African snail, Chiu said.
However, because the shells of snails are thin and fragile, they are not ideal, he said.
A short-term solution would be to set up a collection point for shells near the entrance to the Sansiantai area, he said.
However, to maintain the hermit crabs’ habitat — including the environment and the quality of water — and ensure a sustainable management of fishery resources, long-term investment is needed, Chiu said, adding that right now, the most urgent task is to find shells for the crabs.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching