The Edible Crab is a powerful-looking crab and is the largest of our native crab species. It can be found in rock pools all around the English coastline.  It can also be found in muddy sand in waters as deep as a hundred metres.  This crab is quite a slow-moving crab and because of its size and slowness it often buries itself in the sand to escape danger.

The Edible Crab has a body that is approximately fifteen centimetres wide and can easily be recognised because of its overall reddish-brown colour and its broad shell which looks like it has a pie-crust edge to it.  It has ten walking legs with two very large pincers on the first pair.  The two front pincers have a black tip and the pincers of the male are generally bigger than the female’s.

The female Edible Crab carries her eggs under her abdomen where they are attached to tiny legs called ‘swimmerets’.  She carries her eggs around with her for seven to eight months until they are ready to hatch.  When the larvae hatch out of the eggs, they become part of zooplankton for about a month before they move to the shore to develop into mature crabs.