Real life is worse than nightmares because even in my worst dreams, my twisted imagination could never cook up seeing hundreds of thousands of giant spider crabs littered across the ocean floor. Just imagine yourself swimming in the ocean and being swallowed by the horde of crabs. Imagine all those creepy arms entombing you. Gah, it’s so gross.


What’s sort of cool, though, is that this frightening sea of crabs have actually all migrated to Port Phillip Bay in Australia to molt their old shells off. The horde stretches hundreds and hundreds of feet long with crabs being stacked up to 10 deep right on top of each other. They stick together and wait until their shells harden enough to take on the ocean’s predators on their own.

What’s not sort of cool, though, is that giant spider crabs are freaking huge. Like, their leg span can reach 12 feet from claw to claw. The ones in this video have legs that are about 28-inches long. Now imagine eight of ‘em. And then imagine hundreds of thousands of ‘em.


We’ve seen a swarm of horrifying red crabs before but this is something else.