When two crabs fall in love...

Was diving a local site yesterday and more than half of the dungeness crabs I saw were mating. The viz was about 10 feet which is considered a good day. The shot was taken on my Olympus c4040 with PT-010 housing and single 90DX strobe. f/4.0 @ 1/200. I'm quite new to photography and this was maybe my 10th photo dive.

They could be just good friends - These are both males!

Really??? That sure puts a whole new twist on things! I wonder what sort of behavior this is because we saw about 15 to 20 crabs on the dive and more than half of them were in this position. The only way I know of to identify sex is by the shape of the pelvic plate. Please do share how you can tell. This is good information for a novice diver!

Here is another less-artistic photo of the same pair:

I was winding you up - I have absolutely no idea!

Hahaha! Ok, you wound me up alright! I had been google searching on dungeness crab sex identification for like 20 minutes now! You got me! hehe...

Careful, that carries a mandatory 8-10 in Oregon!

Damn I'm not quick enough as I was going to suggest we can name them Mark and Bob LOLOLOL With all Mark's viagra talk for the boat.