Something Strange at the Beach

This is from loyal reader and former Expedia.com buddy Maren Williams-Melius:


Here's what my dad had to say about the sea creature. He's in Fish & Wildlife, so I figured He'd know-

It IS a crab. It doesn't look like the usual crabs these folk see because
it is from deeper in the water column as you can tell by the fact that the
body of the crab is fairly deep as opposed to rather flat near shore crabs.
This one has four walking legs per side, which is fairly common in crabs,
note that one side is missing some legs where it may have been attacked.
King crabs have three sets of walking legs.










While walking the beach yesterday, Indra spotted something unusual in the water and decided to investigate. We've seen sea turtles, manta rays, man-o-war jellyfish and other interesting specimens, but this was a first.












It looks like a crab, but not the usual blue and white numbers that our dogs like to harass and the fishermen use to catch octopus. This looked more like the creature that attached itself to people's faces in alien. After checking Indra's face, we looked at the underside and...





Hey! Little orange eggs...LOTS of them. Sort of Yucatan caviar I guess.
























Anyway, if there are any crab experts out there, let us know what we grabbed.

Larry