On the sonar screen that shows the bottom of the ocean from the Dana Wharf fishing boat above, the masses of tiny crabs packed close together look like big red clouds.
Countless pelagic crabs, tiny critters also called tuna crabs, are hanging out just a few miles from the Orange County coastline.
Last time these mini creatures were spotted around here, they washed up on local beaches in the millions – making a stinky mess the region’s coastal caretakers had to figure out how to haul away from the sand.
But this time, the sea conditions are different, and it’s unclear if they’ll end up washing onto local beaches again.
“We’re not seeing them on the surface and swimming around like in years past,” Dana Wharf Sporting and Whale Watching boat captain Brain Wooley said. “We’re seeing them on our sonar in the deeper water.”
They are covering the ocean floor at the depth of about 230 feet to 260 feet, he said. Unfortunately for the charters, fish such as the sculpin and rockfish are filling up on the crabs instead of being enticed by bait.
With sea surface temperatures at about 57 degrees, there are much cooler conditions now than the last time the crabs showed up. The warm water current during the El Nino years in 2015 and 2016 is what experts believed brought the crabs to shore previously.
“Typically, you’d associate them with warmer water, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the only factor and only time you’ll see that stuff,” Wooley said. “If there’s a good spawn, masses of these big biomass – wherever they happen to be – they’ll settle down on the bottom.”
The crabs – their species name is pleuroncodes planipes – look like tiny lobsters or crawfish. They are usually found off the Baja coast, and before they came ashore in the thousands a few years ago, they hadn’t been seen in the area for decades.
When they showed up en masse in areas such as Balboa Island and China Cove in Newport Beach, maintenance workers in many areas were left with the task of shoveling them up and hauling them off to the dump.
Some agencies opted to just leave them alone, with the tides washing them away or the birds feasting on them.
People flocked to local beaches to see the rare sight, greeted with a dead-creature stench that filled the air.
“There’s always a chance” that could happen again, Wooley said.
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