Hermit crabs climb into discarded tires but can’t get out and die of starvation

It’s been found that discarded tires lying on the seabed are death traps for hermit crabs. They climb into the tyres but can’t get out because the walls are concave. It’s as simple as that. I suppose they climb into them for protection but it becomes a cage which they can’t get out of. Hirosaki University biologists Atsushi Sogabe and Kiichi Takatsuji conducted two tests, one in the sea and a second in a test environment using an aquarium to confirm whether crabs could enter and then be trapped inside a tyre. They placed a tyre and a large tank with a sandy bottom.

Hermit crabs get trapped inside discarded tyres on the seabed and die
Hermit crabs get trapped inside discarded tyres on the seabed and die. Photo: Atsushi Sogabe and Kiichi Takatsuji / Royal Soc. Open Science

They added hermit crabs from the most common species that they had observed in the field. Over six trials each lasting 18 hours they found that hermit crabs could climb into the tyre but couldn’t get out. The outside of a tyre is convex but the inside is concave and it is that simple physical difference between inside and outside which trapped them.

They described the process as ghost fishing. Ghost fishing is when marine wildlife becomes trapped in discarded nets and other Fishing gear. But they say that tyres can be worse because tyres last longer under the sea. They say that tyres have a “temporal persistence”. This is scientific language to mean that they last a long time!

Hermit crabs are important to the ecosystem in that they are both prey and scavengers. The ghost fishing of hermit crabs can have a cascading effect on coastal communities and ecosystems.

The source of this article is Real Clear Science and they refer to the following: Sogabe Atsushi and Takatsuji Kiichi 2021 “Marine-dumped waste tyres cause the ghost fishing of hermit crabs.” R. Soc. open sci. 8210166210166 http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210166.

SOME MORE ON MARINE WILDLIFE:

Fur seals

New threat of extinction faces Antarctic fur seals

There was a time, about a hundred years ago, when the Antarctic fur seal barely escaped extinction because they were ...
The water is too hot for dolphins in the Amazon river and they are dying in large numbers

Hot water is killing dolphins in large numbers in the Amazon River

Dead dolphins beached on the shores of Lake Tefe or a tributary. Image: video screenshot. NEWS AND COMMENT-LAKE TEFE, AMAZON ...
Seal pup on a beach where they should be left alone

Woman picks up baby seal on beach and it dies of shock

NEWS AND OPINION: Against the advice of an expert, a woman picked up a baby seal on a beach near ...
Lolita

Let’s remember Lolita, the orca held in captivity for 50 years who died just before her release

I would like to remember Lolita, the orca held in captivity for 50 years. She was due to be released ...
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Speciesism - 'them and us' | Cruelty - always shameful
follow it link and logo

Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.