You find them crawling or hopping along the sand or nestled in washed up clumps of seaweed and eel grass on which they feed, protected there from predators such as shore birds. They are beach hoppers or sand fleas, small, highly mobile crustaceans that inhabit the wave-washed beaches between the Capes. Beach hoppers are collectively known as the Talitrid amphipods. Two species inhabit our beaches, the smaller Traskorchestia traskiana, and larger Megalorchestia corniculata (formerly M. califoriana), which grow to almost an inch long. Both of these crustaceans live mostly out of water, their gills acting almost as lungs, entering water only occasionally to wet the gill surfaces. They are mostly nocturnal, moving at night to the water’s edge where they scavenge for food.
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