In August 2015, my buddy Tong from Thailand sent me some photos. There, I saw an unfamiliar crab.
Apparently, he went to a different place than usual and found a new type of crab there. There were also several types of crabs mating. This season is in the middle of the rainy season in Thailand. Even the crabs that usually hide inside the holes seem to be active outside the holes at night. This season is probably their breeding season.

If I were to be shown a scene like this, as a cameraman, I would want to shoot it myself. However, timing is extremely important when photographing living things. If the seasons are different, you won't be able to capture the scenes you want to shoot. He was busy with work in Japan in August, so he couldn't go to Thailand right away to shoot. By the end of September, I had finally found a job. After confirming that the rainy season was not yet over, I hurried to Thailand.

The new crab habitat is Thongpapun, Kanchanaburi, where the queen crab, which I previously introduced in this column, lives. However, the location is far from where I usually go for photography, about a two-hour drive deep into the mountains on an unpaved mountain road. It's a place that would be better called Myanmar than Thailand. It is located at a fairly high altitude, and you can see fields where cabbage and other crops are grown, which are difficult to grow in hot climates.

First of all, I look for a place to stay for the night, but there are no hotels in this place where tourists are unlikely to come. They found a bungalow, but they say it doesn't have air conditioning or hot showers. It's better than camping out in the open, so I decided to stay there. I put my bag down and asked Ton to guide me to the new crab habitat. Its habitat was near a stream that ran through fields in the mountains. There are countless holes all over the field.

It was past 7pm, and it was already pitch dark. I make sure my camera is completely waterproof and wait for the rain to come, but it never rains. I had no choice but to go to the habitat I checked during the day. If you look closely, you can see that the crabs have half of their bodies sticking out of the hole, but as soon as they sense someone's presence, they quickly burrow into the hole. I'm more cautious than I imagined. In this area, crabs make holes in fields and rice paddies, so they seem to be treated as pests. They are like the American crayfish in Japan.

It seems that they do not actively come out of their burrows unless it rains. So, without moving like a stone, I turn off the signs and wait for the crab to come out. When they do this by the water at night, they become prey to blood-sucking creatures such as mosquitoes and black flies.

If the crab gets itchy and moves, it will burrow into the hole. All you can do is wait patiently. I worked hard for about 3 hours and was able to film various scenes, but I was unable to film the mating scene that I was aiming for. Apparently, I had to come about a month in advance. Next year, I would like to come earlier and during the rainy season to shoot.

Two other types of crabs were also seen in the same habitat. There are two types of crabs: the large freshwater crab, which lives underwater, and the medium-sized freshwater crab, which has beautiful purple abdomen and legs. For now, I named the large ones Bronze River Crabs and the medium ones Purple Belly River Crabs.

I looked into Thai books about this crab, but I still don't know its name. There is no doubt that it is not a freshwater crab, but a member of the mountain crab family. It also has a wide variety of colors. There are a variety of colors, including those with a strong reddish tinge, those with an orange color, those with a yellow color, and those with colors in between. The transparent color is beautiful, so I decided to name it Tourmaline Mountain Club. It is a very hardy species and does not seem to be difficult to raise. It has a large oval shape and can be bred in captivity. It will probably become popular for pets in the future.