Puneeta Pandey

I had one of a kind experience when I went to a very beautiful  beach in south Andaman. The whole beach was populated with the sand crabs, Ocipode quadrata, the ghost crab, Dotilla myctiroides , soldier crab and the most important Dotilla clepsydrodactylus, the sand crab. The sandy beach is the only habitat these crabs are comfortable as they pop in and pop out of their burrow in every low and high tide respectively, which make them the perfect organism to sense the rise and fall of the tide. I was in Andamans for two years from July 2006 to May 2008, where I did M. Sc. inn Marine Biology. I liked the island so much that it became one of my dream to write on the marine biodiveristy of the island, it might turn into a book someday. Andaman has always inspired me and will always motivate me to find a better place than what Andaman has, and so far i haven't found.

When I was digging stuffs in internet to decide on my M.Sc dissertation, my guide suggested me to work on the sand bubbler crab which he had observed so many times on most of the beaches in and around Port Blair. I was so amazed with the idea of doing a project on sand bubbler crab not because I wanted to do serious research at that time but the very special reason was to make myself available on the beautiful beaches all the time and minimum classroom and boring lab stuff. I used to carry my camera, sufficient batteries, a mat, water bottle, bread, jam,  maggie noodles, boiled eggs. I observed the crabs on beach for three months and  found that these crabs are worthy of tremendous appreciation that they survive in the most difficult environmental condition and minimum nutrition and still are the happiest living organism. I would say they are happy because they appear on beach in swarm and if we observe carefully we can figure out that they are doing some kind of Spanish tap dance.