How a Photographer Turned a Coconut Crab Into 'Crabzilla'
Photographer Thomas P. Peschak visits the Aldabra Atoll, which is home to a thriving population of coconut crabs.
When photographer Thomas P. Peschak was working on a story about the amazingly biodiverse Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, he went to special lengths to take the perfectly creepy photo of a coconut crab.
Why? The Seychelles’ Aldabra Atoll is one of the only places in the western Indian Ocean that still has a healthy population of the crabs, which are the largest arthropods in the world. They’re widely hunted because, Peschak says, “They’re large, they’re predictable, they’re slow, and they taste phenomenal.” So if the coconut crab community is thriving, it probably means there aren’t many humans around.
Peschak calls these creatures “the true beasts of the crustacean world,” and he wanted to emphasize their alien-like shadow. How
