What exactly is a soft-shell crab?
Crabs belong to a group of animals called arthropods whose skeletal support is provided by a “shell” outside their bodies. Growth is problematic because the old shell must be shed and a larger one formed in its place. This process, called molting, occurs many times through the crab’s lifetime, but at a decelerating rate. Dungeness crabs molt about 12 times by age two, and then approximately once a year through age six. Molting is one of nature’s most interesting and curious phenomena. Data within Puget Sound suggests that while a given area may have one or two “peaks” of molting crab during the year, not all individual crabs adhere strictly to this pattern. Just before molting, the crab has formed the basic “template” of a new shell underneath its older shell. At this time, calcium is absorbed from the old shell and it becomes somewhat flexible. The old shell splits at the back of the crab and it backs out of it’s old skeleton (Figure 1). Even the eye stalk and gill coverings remain wi
