The bright-blue sea is surely an eye-catching scene in Maldives.
But the most impressive thing, at least to me, was at the sand–lots of mysterious holes. Holes were in many sizes, and they seemed to be built by someone with an intention. But who did that for what?
A brief Googling gave me an immediate answer, which I never imagined before.
How ignorant I was! However, I needed an evidence.
I was sitting motionless in front of some holes, sometimes lying on my belly, which draw an attention of a life guard thinking I might have fainted under the strong sunlight. My painful observation came out in vain. There was no single sign of a life coming in or out of the holes.
One night, we (I and my husband) were walking on the sand beach, suddenly I had a feeling that there were many footsteps in the darkness. Haunted by that strange feeling, suddenly I activated the flash function of my iPhone.
Whoopee!
We were surprised and so were they!
“Hello, guys! How’re you?”
Instead of responding to our greeting, they seemed to prefer to ignore us. Like a someone in desperate need of responding to the nature call, they were running to everywhere in a wacky way and then quickly dissapeared in a lightning speed. The motion of their extremities was so fast that I could not count how many legs were moving. But I clearly saw they were hiding away into those holes!
The mystery was finally solved!
“Oh, sure, you need the privacy. Sorry, pals.”
Since that night, I could eventually spot them entering or exiting the holes during daytime.
They were extremely shy or frightened. Whenever exposed to human observation, they quickly ran away to hide their presence.
I thought that they wanted to follow the spirit of the title “Ghost Crab.”
It is a fascinating fact that such a small creature can create a huge structure that shelter himself. Their appearance also greatly appealed to me. They looked like armed knights from the Middle Ages, especially with the thick exoskeleton and a big pair of claws.
Instead of taking selfies with the nice scenery at the beach, I was mostly involved in taking photos and videos of the living creatures around the resort. Not only the ghost crabs but also there were a grey heron, mischievous koels, swagging waterhens, and so many friendly fishes.
The real souvenirs from Maldives were the memories of those living creatures hidden behind the gorgeous scenery. Inspired by those memories, I created a story on our return flight using a mobile app called Spark Video by Adobe.
It was the first video created by myself and I admit it was rather roughly presented. Yet. it is the second to my most favorite video.
Enjoy!
Ptak w Pohang 