Crab
Edible Crab
Cancer pagurus
Cancer pagurus Linnaeus, 1758 · Cancridae WoRMS 107276
Reference photos
Tap a photo to enlarge.
Unmistakable once you've seen one: a broad reddish-brown shell with a crimped 'pie-crust' edge and big black-tipped pincers. Small ones hide under stones on the lower shore, while the dinner-plate-sized adults live in deeper water.
Depth
From intertidal down to 100 m
Size
Carapace width up to 25 cm, typically up to 15 cm
Habitat
Bedrock and under boulders, mixed coarse grounds, and offshore in muddy sand; lower shore to about 100 m
Behaviour
Mainly nocturnal; ambushes prey from shelters under rocks and digs large pits in sediment to reach bivalves
Diet
I eat
- A variety of live molluscs and crustaceans, as well as carrion
- Crustaceans such as shore crabs, porcelain crabs and squat lobsters, and smaller crabs of its own kind
- Molluscs including dog whelks, winkles, mussels, cockles and oysters, plus buried bivalves such as razor shells dug out of the sediment
Eats me
- Fish such as cod and wolffish, which it is thought to avoid by being mainly nocturnal
- Seals, which take crabs and hunt by sight
- Conger eels, recorded taking edible crabs off Ireland
Where you'd find it
Found all around Britain and Ireland, so you have a chance of seeing it anywhere on the coast.
Sources
Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.
Marine Life Information Network, Marine Biological Association of the UK
MarLINlink checked 2026-08-30
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