July 2020 - Blue Crab Life Cycle
Blue crabs play an important part in economic and culinary traditions across the Mid-Atlantic. But few know about the life cycle of Callinectes sapidus.
Crabs are indirect developers, meaning they go through a larval stage before becoming the crab you are familiar with eating. Crab develop inside eggs attached to their mother's abdomen (the mother is sometimes called a "sponge crab" because the eggs look like a sponge). The larvae hatch from these eggs and are zooplankton for several weeks or more, before settling to the bottom as megalopae and then metamorphosing into a juvenile crab looking much like the adult.
To learn more about the blue crab life cycle, check out Under the Scope, a website built for educators and their students to learn more about zooplankton, or the July episode of SeaTalk. Or, for a culinary angle, check out our crab recipe page.