Although common as an adult year-round resident south of New Jersey, the ghost crab is sensitive to the cold and does not over-winter well here in the northern part of its range. Immature specimens appear each summer as far north as Martha's Vineyard drifting as larvae but reports of adults north of New Jersey are sketchy. In New Jersey I have observed concentrations of adults at Corson's and Townsend's Inlets as well as along Delaware Bay.

Thanks in part to the influence of the Gulf Stream, these areas are within the warmer climatic zone of coastal Delaware and Maryland, where on the average winter temperatures can be up to five degrees higher than at Sandy Hook. Winter temperatures and possibly a need for relatively untrampled beaches seem to determine the northern range of the ghost crab.

The burrow is on the ocean side of the dunes, up the face of a cut that has developed as a result of park vehicles patrolling the beach. It is approximately 50 meters from the shoreline and 170 centimeters above the high-tide mark.

As the weather cooled around the tenth of the month, the crab finally closed-up its burrow permanently. Naturalists familiar with Sandy Hook and Island Beach State Park (NJ) indicate that only immature specimens have been reported from those beaches. This probably means that the adult now hibernating in the dunes at Sandy Hook is the northernmost adult ghost crab in New Jersey and may occupy the last outpost in a range that extends south along the Atlantic coast to Brazil.

NOTE: Grant is a biologist on the staff of the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium; more often on the beach than in the office.