Seabed of Molting Crabs a Dazzling Backdrop for Free Dive

Stunning footage shared to Instagram on June 19 showed Australian divers swimming among an abundance of molting giant spider crabs near St Leonards, Victoria.

Keen submarine photographer Jules Casey shared the footage to her Instagram account. In the video, Casey and her friends can be seen swimming over a sea of soon-to-be exoskeletons in a “water temperature [of] 11°C.”

Casey told Storyful: “This is the giant spider crabs’ migration. Several of my friends decided to free-dive with the crabs and have fun filming them.”

She explained that “thousands and thousands” of spider crabs gather to molt from their old shell as there is “safety in numbers.”

Molting is the term used to describe how crabs periodically shed their shell to develop a new and bigger one.

“They double in size and their shell is soft for a couple of days,” Casey said. “During this time they are vulnerable to predators.”

Casey published the footage with a caption stipulating that the exact filming location should remain secret as the species was endangered by overfishing. She later told Storyful that the crabs had moved on to deeper water once their shell had hardened, and that the location could therefore be revealed.

Many more of her aquatic adventures can be found on Newswire. Credit: Jules Casey via Storyful

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