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The Conversation
The Conversation
Environment
David Samuel Johnson, Associate Professor of Marine Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science

How a thumb-sized climate migrant with a giant crab claw is disrupting the Northeast's Great Marsh ecosystem

Male fiddler crabs are small, with one oversized claw. David S. Johnson

Nine years ago, I stood on the muddy banks of the Great Marsh, a salt marsh an hour north of Boston, and pulled a thumb-sized crab with an absurdly large claw out of a burrow. I was looking at a fiddler crab – a species that wasn’t supposed to be north of Cape Cod, let alone north of Boston.

As it turned out, the marsh I was standing in would never be the same. I was witnessing climate change in action.

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