Last week Hawaii residents experienced a strange and unprecedented event: millions (perhaps billion) of tiny round, unidentified creatures washed ashore. They were round, about the size of peas, and had a purplish hue. The creatures appeared to be tiny crabs, which for some reason had been washed ashore en masse. (Some surfers reported that the creatures were crawling aboard their surf boards to hitch a ride, which must surely have been an unsettling event.) The event has so far been confined to the south shore of Oahu.
The current best guess as to the identification of these berry-like creatures is that they are a larval form of the Carpilus maculatus crab, better known as the Spotted reef crab or the 7-11 crab. (So called because it has 7 spots on the top of its shell and 4 spots on the bottom.) Although no one is certain why they would be washing up in such numbers, speculation includes a connection to the recent rough weather. The turbulent water may have caused air bubbles in the crabs' shells, which would prevent them from swimming properly. Water currents may also have shifted unexpectedly, causing the tiny creatures to wash up on shore instead of drifting through the ocean as usual.
