Supersized Crabs: Chesapeake Bay Crustaceans Becomes Larger by Eating Carbon Pollution

Supersized crabs might sound like a blessing to a seafood lover, but they might not be so great for other sea creatures.

Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay are becoming more supersized because they're feeding on carbon pollution that comes from power plants, factories and vehicles and settles in the oceans and settles in the ocean.

While the crabs are becoming bigger, they're going after bigger pray which means bad news for oysters. The crabs are growing bigger while oysters are becoming smaller.

"Higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing oysters to grow slower, and their predators - such as blue crabs - to grow faster," Justin Baker Ries, a marine geologist at the University of North Carolina's Aquarium Research Center, said in an recent interview according to the Washington Post.

According to the Post, blue crabs may become more superzied over the next 75 to 100 years due to ocean acidification. This could mean that oysters and other organisms might start disappearing, which would throw the food chain and ecosystem off base.

This would go against efforts by Virginia and Maryland which have given hundreds of millions of towards helping the blue crab and oyster population.

This carbon is also affected other edibles like lobster and shrimp all along the Atlantic coast. The coral of the ocean is also being affected by the acidity.

For the crabs, the more carbon they eat, the faster they molt, which allows their shell to grow faster and stronger. This is making the crabs more dangerous predators. They are easily able to get their way into an oyster.

While a bigger crab might sound appetizing, they aren't necessarily better. The crabs are becoming so big because their shells are becoming bigger, but that doesn't mean that they have more meat to be eaten inside.