SEA 



SCIENCE 



David Eggleston 's blue crab research offers a new understanding of how hurricanes benefit crab crops. 



Blue Crabs: 



Study Reveab New Secrets 



By Ann Green 



professor of marine sciences at NC State 

 University. "The hurricane's winds drive 

 the crabs toward the western shore of the 

 Pamlico Sound and into the Croatan, 

 Albemarle and Currituck sounds. We 

 usually have bumper crops of juvenile crabs 

 after hurricanes." 



After Hurricane Fran, Eggleston and 

 Etherington, an NC State graduate student 



32 EARLY SUMMER 1999 



L*AlSt 



f ust one day after Hurricane 

 Fran ripped through the salty, shallow 

 marshes of the Pamlico Sound, North 

 Carolina Sea Grant researchers David 

 Eggleston and Lisa Etherington stumbled 

 upon peat beds packed with juvenile blue 

 crabs. 



By discovering the crabs inshore in 

 peat beds composed of old plant material, 



Eggleston and Etherington identified an 

 unknown nursery habitat for early 

 juvenile crabs. In normal weather, 

 juvenile crabs don't settle inshore but 

 inhabit the seagrass beds along the sound 

 side of the Outer Banks. 



"You only see pulses of crabs come 

 inshore after a hurricane or a tropical 

 storm," says Eggleston, an assistant 



