Every year, millions of red, black or moro crabs are crushed by vehicles on the road that leads from Playa Larga to Playa Girón, in the province of Matanzas. The migration occurs at the end of April, for several days or weeks, when the first rains motivate the migration from the forest to the sea at the reproductive stage of these species.
In the cooler hours of the morning and late afternoon, or in cloudy and rainy weather, the spectacle becomes incredible and unavoidable for motorists, whose tires are frequently damaged, pierced by the strong pincers of this crustacean.
Their mass death does not threaten the survival of these prolific species, which are not endemic to Cuba. Every year we see millions of crabs die and the following year just as many crabs that survived.
Some time ago, an international cooperation project was launched to protect these species of crabs. The idea included the construction of tunnels and dikes on the road, a kind of crab-duc.
The tunnels were located on the perimeter between the Cueva de los Peces and up to Punta Perdiz, one after the other, to observe their effectiveness. However, the crabs did not use the underground passages as expected, since the crabs do not pass through a certain precise point, but sometimes move their path, or climb any wall or other structure in its unstoppable effort to reach the sea.
The life of the red crab passes on land, however, in its reproductive cycle, the male moves to the sea where he takes a bath and returns immediately to find a wooded area and mate with the females. After a while, they return to the sea, where they reproduce. The young specimens that have not been consumed by fish and other predators in their larval and juvenile stages, leave the coast, and like an army of tiny ants, they cross the road again and go into the forest to become adults.
The instinct to reproduce to preserve the species can paradoxically cost the lives of these Cuban Moorish crabs.
These species of crustaceans have nocturnal habits. They live in muddy terrains and savannahs, their caves are inclined obliquely and intercepted by others in all directions, which allows the oxygenation of the soils. They are not edible for humans, but they serve as food for other terrestrial and marine species, such as the cangrejero falcon, an endemic Cuban bird.
The red color of this crab is due to the accumulation of tungsten, a heavy metal that could remain in the human body forever, if the ingestion of this crab was frequent, and could affect fertility, in the case of humans, as well as cause diarrhea, intestinal pain and kidney necrosis.
Red crab migrations also occur on the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, in Pinar del Río; on the highway from Baconao to Guamá, in Santiago de Cuba; on the coastal part of the road that connects Cienfuegos to Trinidad, and on a section of the embankment that connects Gibara to Caletones, in Holguín.
Comentarios