Hermit Crap

Margate is lucky to have its very own crab museum, showcasing the incredible diversity of the species. They can be tiny, huge, cute, scary, vulnerable, indestructible and millions of years old. They affect all of our lives in ways that would never occur to most of us, from maintaining the oceans to helping us to create important new medicines. 

Thanet has its own population of local hermit crabs, which is where the inspiration for this mural was born. Our friends at Thanet Coastal Project told us that hermit crabs can be found throughout the British Isles, usually occupying rocky and sandy shorelines. They live in rock pools and pools of seawater in sandy bays, carrying their shells with them, then swapping them regularly for larger ones as they grow and moult. 

Due to the huge quantities of plastic entering the ocean’s biodiversity, hermit crabs occasionally upgrade their homes to a plastic item – the example depicted here has found a discarded Bic pen top. Reports now confirm that hermit crabs even find their way into plastic bottles. When they grow too big, they get stuck inside and die, letting off a pheromone alerting other crabs that the once occupied home is now vacant. The cumulative effect of this unnatural incursion into the natural world results in plastic bottles found discarded on the beach, full of dead hermit crabs. 

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