Talk:King crab

Article Works Factually but Is Not Written Like A Natural Article

Its more like a list of facts. Correct and cited but not written in a real article format.

Also-- one side point. The leg span of the larger king crabs is really something. Would add interest to the article especially in the opening sentence.

69.171.160.245 (talk) 04:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixes

this thing is a total mess, i can't follow it, and the picture box is too big.

Therefore, I have rewritten it. Stemonitis 13:49, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

this article needs a lot of work. the references to stone crabs is ambiguous. its also very very shy on details and could perhaps use some information on catching king crabs.

Missing information

Missing key factual information (notably quantification of size for a creature that is notable for its size), and then refers to the relative size of the varieties of king crab. Halsteadk 22:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Weights and/or sizes are now present for the species which are discussed in depth. --Stemonitis 10:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Picture

This picture in the upper right corner needs to be replaced. This is not representative of the appearance of king crabs. The one with the woman holding the crab is the real deal. Unschool 19:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Two different species. Both are King Crabs, even though they look different. -- Moondigger 23:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm. That certainly makes sense. But I don't believe that the one with all the protrusions is commercially harvested, is it? Might be wise to draw that distinction for those whose only contact comes at Red Lobster. Unschool 04:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

You know, that must be the record for the longest time between a question I've asked and the reply. 379 days. That's Wikipedia.  :-) Unschool 04:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I saw "14 May" and thought two weeks was too long for the question to go without a reply... I didn't catch that it was actually a year and two weeks. :) -- Moondigger 18:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Stone Crabs?

Stemonitis, it's obvious, looking at your user page, that you know a thing or two thousand about crabs. But please help me out here and give a citation on this "stone crab" thing. I worked in the king crab industry for four years, both processing and fishing (more than twenty years ago, admitedly), and never heard this term then or since. And when you say " . . . are called stone crabs by some", you really are (unintentionally, I'm sure) employing weasel words. If you had said that in the article itself, I'd have to delete it. But anyway, could you just give some citations that support the stone crabs thing? Unschool 19:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Replied on my talk page --Stemonitis 06:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup - Size!!

The article refers to these creatures having a "large size", but nowhere does it give any quantitative size information! Sorry, but it is this lack of key information that gives Wikipedia a poor image and makes it very unreliable as a source for people to use for research. So I shall have to go elsewhere to find out how big a king crab is! Halsteadk 22:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's worse than that - elsewhere there are references to "largest" and "significantly smaller" - relative to other types of king crabs, which is nowhere quantified. Tagged with "cleanup" Halsteadk 22:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair points, to be sure. From personal experience, I would point to the photo with the woman holding the crab. It's not a scientific description of size, but it is accurate and representative. [I am less impressed with the two other photos of the spiny-looking crabs; in four years of working the king crab (and tanner crab and opilio, bka "snow crab") harvest, I never saw anything resembling those.] Unschool 22:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I have added a couple of figures for two species. I couldn't find any measurements for L. couesi. The numbers aren't really directly comparable (one is an average, the other a maximum), but it gives an idea. I hope this is enough to warrant my removal of the {{cleanup}} tag. --Stemonitis 16:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this Stemonitis but I think as the article keeps referring to size rather than weight, this really needs to be added. Halsteadk 20:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

But surely weight is a measure of size — size need not refer solely to lengths. The article makes no reference to "shorter" or "longer". --Stemonitis 20:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair comment, and there is the photo of the person holding one for scale. I still feel that there is key missing info but I'm happy to leave the cleanup tag off, and thanks for adding something quantitative at all! Cheers, Halsteadk 10:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep my eyes open for any better measurements. At the very least, minimum landing sizes must be available for such commercially significant species. --Stemonitis 10:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are minimum specs mandated by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game; taking undersize crab can cost a ship more in fines than they take in. But these specs only refer to the width of the head (body), not the weight, nor the distance from leg tip to leg tip. Unschool 04:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Crab Like?

I heard that King Crabs and this article kind of confirms that. Could someone smarter then my self maybe include more information about this and perhaps include a different name for them.Mantion (talk) 21:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Could you explain the problem, please? --Stemonitis (talk) 07:12, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I think he means that if the article refers to King Crabs as "crab-like", that raises an issue nowhere addressed. If they are not "true" crabs, why not, and what are they?

I'm no expert, but I believe the "king" crab is not also known as a "stone" crab, but as a "snow" crab. The definition of "stone" crab has them too far south. We eat them in Florida. The shell is far harder than what is called the "snow" crab down here. The so-called "snow" crab resembles what we used to call a "king" crab years ago in New England markets. I'd say king crab and snow crab are different words for the same thing, but not stone crab. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tzurinskas (talk • contribs) 16:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

You're talking about the Florida stone crab, which is indeed different. That doesn't mean that other people don't call lithodid crustaceans "stone crabs", however. Snow crab, is usually used for Chionoecetes opilio, but could well also be used for different taxa. This also demonstrates why scientific names are so useful. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:18, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation

The horseshoe crab was formerly known as the "king crab" but there is no mention of this in the entry or the entry navigation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.92.79.239 (talk) 16:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

"Although formerly classified among the hermit crabs in the superfamily Paguroidea, king crabs are now placed in a separate superfamily, Lithodoidea."

My knowledge of Decapoda is small, so I was wondering why there are all these genuses and species of animals without the "supposed" superfamily Lithodoidea. Looking on google books, I am still unclear. Should Lithodoidea be a redirect to this page?

Lithodoidea also contains Hapalogastridae, so is not the same taxon and should not redirect here. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Bad picture

That picture in the info box is awful. If that's a king crab, it's not like any I ever fished. 50.193.171.70 (talk) 15:20, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on King crab. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110606064728/http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/s21/s21rbz1-109.pdf to http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/s21/s21rbz1-109.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120122104557/http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/s23/s23rbz005-107.pdf to http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/s23/s23rbz005-107.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120319221503/http://www.umes.edu/cms300uploadedFiles/Stevens.2006.JCB.pdf to http://www.umes.edu/cms300uploadedFiles/Stevens.2006.JCB.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Infobox collage

I've changed the image in the infobox, as our previous one had been bothering me for a long time, but I never had a concrete better idea until today. My rationale:

• The previous image had a lot of extraneous vertical space. It was not very high-resolution (let alone taking into account extraneous space), in my opinion the angle makes the image not easily readable, and the same oblique angle obscures the chelipeds and the face of the crab. Back in 2006, this probably really was our best image, but I think it stuck out of nobody else knowing what to replace it with.
• The image of N. agassizii is probably the nicest image we have, but it was previously being used for a caption about spination. This is now taken over by L. aotearoa, for which we have an excellent comparison between juveniles and adults.
• King crabs are a highly morphologically diverse group that can't realistically be represented by one image.
• As stated previously, the image of N. agassizii is great: well-framed, colorful, detailed, taken in nature, easily recognizable since it's similar to Lithodes and superficially similar to Paralithodes, and FHD. Next is C. sitchensis which is quite common and has a very unique place in the cladogram. Paralithodes camtschaticus comes third as arguably the most recognizable king crab (and we get a great shot of ventral surface and pereopods). Continuing the pattern of smaller, less archetypical king crabs being in the right column, Phyllolithodes papillosus; definitely wanted a plate in here. Paralomis granulosa is next as the type species of by far the most diverse genus of king crabs (additionally showing granules rather than spines). And finally, we have H. cavicauda, a representative of Hapalogastrinae. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 22:49, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

Stone crab

@MossOnALog: I saw you undid your edit removing the nickname 'stone crab', but just to clarify: that's cited to Poore & Ahyong (2023) p. 311. A lot of the oxygen is sucked out of the room by Menippe mercenaria, the Florida stone crab, if you search the nickname, although it's definitely widely used enough in literature about king crabs to include. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 00:44, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

@TheTechnician27 Is there currently an issue with the article's content or sources since I reinstated that particular edit over 10 days ago? If yes, I'm happy to re-examine my edits or discuss improvements—otherwise I'm at a loss for what your point is. MossOnALog^Talk 01:05, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Even though you reinstated the edit, you never added any citation for the nickname once you found out one existed, so I'm just clarifying that it's not something that (necessarily) needs to be done were you inclined to in the future. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 00:25, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

king of crabs

There’s a game called king of crabs and its a game about crabs and searching this game up is usually flooded with topics about the actual “crab” and not the game. This crab is usually mistaken for a spider crab Fixinv misinformation (talk) 15:58, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I've added a hatnote. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:33, 15 February 2026 (UTC)