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With giant pincers and rough, spider-like legs, Caribbean king crabs don’t look like your typical heroes. Yet, these crustaceans may be key to solving one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: the decline of coral reefs.
In recent decades, warming seas, diseases, and other threats have wiped out half of the world’s corals and 90 percent of those in Florida. And this past summer, the problem accelerated. A devastating heat wave struck the Caribbean, pushing the reef in the Florida Keys — the largest in the continental US — closer to the brink of collapse.
The decline of coral reefs is an enormous problem for wildlife and human communities. Reefs not only provide habitat for as much as a quarter of all marine life, including commercial fish, but they also help safeguard coastal communities during severe storms. Simply put, we need coral reefs.
Coral reefs, meanwhile, need crabs.
Lucky for them, help is on the way. Scientists are in the process of building a crab army — hundreds of thousands of crustaceans strong — that they’ll unleash on Florida’s reefs, giving this ailing ecosystem a tool to fight back.
Crabs to the rescue
If you find crustaceans icky, Jason Spadaro’s lab is not a place you want to visit. Housed in a large, hurricane-proof building on Summerland Key in the Florida Keys, it’s full of tanks that are full of crabs — dozens of them. Some are the size of fingernails; others are as large as dinner plates. They all look a bit like rocks.
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