The reason for travelling to Christmas Island at Christmas is to see the red crab migration, it hadn’t occurred to me to study this in any great detail before leaving and so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. If I was honest , I was probably hoping for a bit of a fishing trip, with an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Al had been getting regular updates and it looked like red Crabs were constantly migrating from about August. Apparently this is something to do with moon cycles and the weather
When we arrived the first thing apparent, it’s a trilogy of crab migrations not just one, apparently the blokes all go down to the ocean early to get ahead of the woman folk, They do the normal things and build a home for the new bride, and hang around socialising and waiting for the ladies to turn up.
Once the ladies arrive there’s the usual courting activities, and while she is priggers he pops back to the bush for more socialising. She hangs on until a full moon and a high tide as you do and then drops her up 120,000 eggs which hatch immediately and she to heads back off to the bush.
About three weeks later the little guys come ashore in their millions, we arrived in time for the little guys to come back to shore. Watching this mass landing of the youngsters is a complete pleasure and perhaps the most fascinating thing I have ever seen.
Oh and forget about the fishing although there are lots of private boats most of the fishing is for pelagic, not bottom dwellers as the waters here are exceptionally deep and drop off almost immediately from the shores. It appears there is no organised chartered fishing trips from what I have seen.
The island provides an amazing amount of walking and sites to see and of course the bird life here is very unique with a number of endemic species.
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