Hi again everyone,

The whistling/blowing method for removing hermit crabs
will usually work, as will the "new shell" offering or bury-
ing them.  If you don't have time to fool with them, since
there are a bunch of crabbed shells that you want to
pick up, you can just bag them up and take them home
and use my method:  warm running water.  It will work on
almost any shell with a round or oval opening, but doesn't
work on the ones that inhabit cone shells or olives.

A stream of warm water (not really hot, or you will kill the
crab and have to extract him in several pieces) run straight
down into the shell will put pressure on the crab, and will
make him attempt to "push" the water out of his home.
(You can test this by pushing on a crab in a larger shell,
like a turban, with your finger.  He will try to push your
finger out.)  With the water running, not blasting, into his
face, he will continue to come farther out until you can
catch him by the body.  After you have caught him, if you
continue to run warm water around his abdomen and
wiggle him in and out of his shell a bit, his abdomen will
relax and he will release his hold on the shell.  You can
drop him in a jar and release him later, or hunt him a new
shell that isn't as pretty as his previous home.  It typically
takes about 30 seconds to remove one by this method.

As for alternate offerings, I've seen hermit crabs carrying
bottle caps, pieces of rubber hose, coral, plastic soda
bottles, and who knows what else.  My favorite one was
found in a few inches of water in Pala Lagoon just below
my house here in American Samoa.  I was out looking
for augers in the sand at low tide, and found a trail that
I figured must be the granddaddy of all Terebra crenulata.
I followed the trail for almost a hundred feet before I found
it's source:  a hermit crab dragging a six foot section of
someone's broken bamboo fishing pole.

Good luck with the evictions,



Don




===================================================

For small crab-inhabited shells, this method usually works. Simply push the
shell & crab into the sand and wait. More often than not the crab will abandon
the shell to reach the surface. In my college days (remember that this was the
70's) we would then offer the crab "unusual" items to substitute for the
shell.
Bic Pen caps were my favorite.


*****************************************
 G Thomas Watters, PhD
 Ohio Biological Survey &
 Aquatic Ecology Laboratory
 Ohio State University
 1315 Kinnear Road
 Columbus, OH 43212 USA
 v: 614-292-6170  f: 614-292-0181
******************************************

"The world is my oyster except for months with an 'R' in them" - Firesign
Theater

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he has
to buy a license" - GTW

"God knows everything - he's omnivorous" - Homer Simpson