The Problem
As years go by, hermit crabs at my local beaches in Okinawa Island are slowly losing diverse range of shells in which they need for survival. People taking home "cool" shells that they find at the beach results to a loss of protective shells that are available for hermit crabs. This leads to hermit crabs scrambling to find anything remotely similar in protection to their natural shell shelter. Plastic bottle caps, shells too big and small, and broken shells are some of the objects that many hermit crabs utilize as shelters due to the lack of, and a decrease, in well suited shells at the beach. I imagine that this problem is not only prevalent at my local beaches at home, but at other hermit crab habitats in other places around the world as well.
