More Sand Pellets from Crab Feeding Activities

The topography of the shore near Cape Tribulation varies. At one point it is semi-vegetated with salt-tolerant shrubs. Here the substrate holds water for longer at low tide and the root systems of the plants trap finer sediments and nutrients that are washed down the beach from the nearby forest.

The different composition and consistency of the beach sediments in this place has given rise to a variation on the theme of sand ball patterns made by feeding crabs. The crabs may be the same species or a related species to Scopimera inflata which created the scatters and radiating patterns of drying-out pellets further along the beach (see the previous post). In this location, however, the enriched sand was relatively wet, which meant that the pellets coalesced into discrete linear masses that made very interesting designs on the surface of the beach.