Mega Crab Makes Cameo on Susquehanna Flats Field Trip

HAVRE DE GRACE, MD — A giant crab was pulled from the water near the Susquehanna Flats recently during an educational trip hosted by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It was later released.

Captain Ian Robbins, who works for the foundation, caught the crab while out on the "Snow Goose" with a group of Aberdeen High School students. The work boat spends a week or two in Harford County ferrying students around to look for life in the bay — where they found the crab on the bottom of the flats on Sept. 27, according to Chesapeake Bay Foundation spokesman Tom Zolper.

Annually, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation takes 40,000 students out on Maryland waterways for boat trips tied in with material students are learning about ecology or the bay.

"It’s these firsthand experiences that more than anything motivate people of all ages to help save the [Chesapeake] Bay," Zolper said.

"Several of the [Aberdeen] students ... had never been on a boat," he added. "The students that day saw five or more bald eagles while aboard. They also saw the huge underwater grass bed on the Susquehanna Flats, and learned that underwater grasses are making a significant comeback."

He noted that among those on the boat was the president of Aberdeen High School's environmental club, who was inspired to get his group involved in a bay restoration project as a result of the trip.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has created a page for people who would like to help protect the blue crab through cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay waterways.

Photos courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.