Spotted

This week's Fish Hoek walk revealed a few Three-Spot Swimming Crabs (Ovalipes trimaculatus) washed up on the high tide mark. These crabs live in the turbulent surf zone on sandy beaches and eat bivalves and gastropods, particularly Plough Snails (Bullia). They can swim, as their hind limbs which have "paddles" on them indicate, but they also scuttle across the sand, and bury themselves in the sand - backwards first - when threatened.