The Outdoor Line Forum

I was at Grayland, Wa. over the week end ( Feb. 11 &12 ) for a little R&R and I did my reguler morning walks on the beach. I walked the high tide line looking for treasures and I was appauled by my find thousands and thousands of female crab shells and remains from 3 inches to 6 1/2 inches. All I had to do was look to the west and there was the commercial crab fleet just off shore. I ask myself why are these guys allowed to continue this distructive practice. I went back to the house and grab the telescope and watched the guys unloading the pots pitching the female and undersize crab high in the air as the crab hit the water the impact breaks the membrain under the shell killing the crab. If these boats had a water slide to return these crab softly to the water we would not be loosing so many reproducers. thanks for the vent Side Lined.

It's also possible that you witnessed a "molting" event, as your observations are closely aligned with such an event.

Crab molting is nothing short of amazing. To grow larger the crab must back out of it's old shell to grow a new one. Not only do they back out of their shell, they also back out of everything, mouth parts, eye stalks, guts, and even manage to somehow back out of their gills! The resulting empty shell is called an exuvia that contains an empty shell of the entire crab - guts and all. Populations of crab tend to molt together. The females molt in the spring before the males - mating takes place shortly after. After such an event the beach can become littered with literally thousands of empty shells and body parts. If it is close to mating season you would most likely see a female molting event.

I found a couple of good pictures from the ODFW website....

Here's the website if the picture doesn't come through well.

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/mrp/shellfis ... istory.asp

While I'm no fan of commercial crabbing in Puget Sound, I really do not have an issue with those fishermen crabbing the coast.
I have to agree with George and the observation that you may well have witnessed a molting event. After all, you described legal sized crab as well and there would be no reason to believe that the commercial crabbers were practicing "catch and release"..
Thanks for that link and information George! Very interesting stuff!