Starfish

We were excited to pull up our fist crab pot in hopes that we would find a cage full of crabs. To our surprise there were no crabs, rather we caught two starfish, which were trying to maneuver towards the chicken legs in the bait cage. Not what we were hoping to discover, but at least we caught something!

In my research, I found that crabs will eat starfish. We should have let the pot soak a little longer, and perhaps we would have caught crabs! I am still not sure why the starfish were attracted to the chicken, since it sounds that they prefer to eat clams and muscles. Maybe they thought clams tasted like chicken? There seem to be many varieties of starfish in Puget Sound, but my photos were not detailed enough to figure out which species. Maybe these are Blood Star? This was a lesson learned, both in photo taking and crabbing techniques.