Question:

Weird species on shores of Destin?

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We went to Destin last week. My husband found some kind of weird species just off the shoreline. When the waves hit the sand and flow backwards and pull sand with it, you can see these little white things burying themselves. We scooped up some clams doing it, but these were much bigger, like the size of a large roach. They had a tail that tucked under kinda like a crawfish, but the tail came to a point and had no fin and stayed tucked under. We observed about 5 of them in our kids' sand bucket for a while, we put just a tiny bit of sand and filled the bucket with water. They seem to use the tail to dig their way downward in the sand, but it moved so fast you could barely see it. There were no claws like a lobster or crawfish, and the body was more rounded and resembled an insect. They were fast. I call them sea roaches. They give me the creeps. What are they?

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  1. They are called sand crab or sand mole crabs or sand fleas.  They are harmless and not weird.  Often used for bait by surf fishing folks.

    http://nathistoc.bio.uci.edu/crustacea/D...


  2. Yep, good ol' sand fleas / mole crabs... used to catch them all the time to play with when I was a kid, completely harmless, wonderful bait.

  3. A lobster

  4. They're sand fleas.

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