HCA: Hermit Crab Association

Quite a few years ago I vacationed in the DR and while snorkeling I saw thousands of tiny shells on the bottom of the ocean. Thinking they were just shells, I grabbed a ziplock bag and started collecting them. When I had a tonne, I looked in the bag and realized the shells were actually all tiny baby hermits! Teeny tiny legs were flailing all over the place! I let them all go but I have always wondered, were they baby land hermits? Or were they the sea kind? Do land hermits live in the DR? If so, what kind do you think they were?

I would say they are the aquatic type.

Baby land hermits find shells and exit the water within a few days, or they'd drown. They're also not much bigger than sand grains at that point, so it's almost impossible to see them moving. What you saw were marine hermits, and yes - there will be tons of them down there!

There should be Purple Pinchers in the Dominican Republic, but between people destroying habitat and extreme shell shortages they are getting harder to find in their native ranges. Some islands that used to be covered are down to just a few in very remote places. I haven't heard one way or the other for that country.

I saw purple pinches on the beach of the resort I stayed at when I was in the Dominican Republic this summer. They were only micros and weren't much bigger than my pinkie, but they were already on land by this point not in the water.