Crabs are impossible to ignore on Christmas Island. Visitors and newly arrived residents soon become familiar with the conspicuously visible red crabs, robber crabs and blue crabs, but most are not aware that there are many other​ more cryptic terrestrial, intertidal and subtidal crab species that inhabit the island. Collectively, these crustaceans play a very important role in the island's unique ecosystems.

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Most people think of crabs as marine creatures and are surprised to learn that there are land-living crabs that will drown if submerged in water. Christmas Island has about a dozen terrestrial crab species, five of which are found nowhere else, and is home to probably the world's most diverse and abundant land crab populations, that are certainly not matched by any other island. Further research will undeniably reveal additional, as yet undiscovered species of crabs, and lead to the new taxonomic classification of some of the island's known species.

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Hopefully this website, along with the book "Crabs of Christmas Island", will assist in raising an increased interest in, and highlight, the diversity of Christmas Island crabs. Crabs are an integral component of Christmas Island's unique faunal assemblage. The protection and conservation of the island's distinctive natural features is central to Christmas Island's long term socio-economic future as it moves on from an unsustainable and environmentally destructive phosphate mining history.

Have a flick through the pages of this web site to get a close up look at the many and varied crab species that can be found on Christmas Island.

Check out the Robber crab page and read about the crazy slaughter of over 3,000 of these magnificent crabs that has occurred, and is still happening, on island roads.