Epic Hermit Crab Migration Captured on Camera

It’s something you have to see to believe. A beach on the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands is overtaken by a millions of hermit crabs during the crustacean’s mass migration, turning the sandy shore into a sea of clattering shells and legs.

Veteran videographer Steve Simonsen, who captured the phenomenon last week in a video that is going viral online said, he was covered with crabs in the shooting process.

“Crabs were crawling over my feet, arms, cameras. They crawled right into the lens hood,” Simonsen said. “I was freaked out.”

Simonsen, who specializes in underwater and nature films, was summoned by a friend, author Pam Gaffin, to the beach at Nanny Point to document the spectacular sight. Gaffin had been there since 6 a.m. after hearing the crabs rustling in the underbrush the night before in a mass exodus to the beach.

“[Gaffin] told me … there were millions and millions of them …she likened it to the migrations of Serengeti. I didn’t need to hear anymore, I loaded my car with cameras and was out the door,” Simonsen wrote on his Vimeo page, where the video was first posted.

Simonsen arrived at 10 am and joined Gaffin, who was snorkeling in the water.

“You couldn’t walk …you had to pick out high rocks that no crabs were on. Or if a crab or four or five where on it, I had to brush the crabs off with my foot. I had to pick my way through,” he said. “What I found out that the crabs were not interested at all in pinching. They were on a mission.”

Hermit crabs, also known as soldier crabs, are found throughout the Caribbean islands and take part in a great migration en masse annually in August to mate. The crustaceans travel to the beach, leave their shells and enter the water to lay eggs, according to Smithosianmag.com. After spending two minutes in the water, Simonsen said the crabs turn around, return to land and make their way home.

“People who live on St. John know this happens in August. I’ve never been able to see it or know when it happens,” said Simonsen, who plans to study the creature’s migrations, moon phases, tides and stake out beaches next August to see the phenomenon again.

Simonsen is  working on a project filming leatherback sea turtles that nest on St. Croix.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

38 Studios’ IP Kingdoms of Amalur up for auction. Will EA or Epic buy?

The state of Rhode Island now owns Kingdoms of Amalur and Project Copernicus and it plans to sell. Who might be interested in buying?

The disintegration of Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios, the company behind this year’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the cancelled MMO set in the same universe Project Copernicus, is coming to a close. Shut down in May with all employees shown the door, there are survivors emerging from the wreckage. Just today, Epic Games officially announced the opening of Impossible Games, a new studio made up of former staffers from Big Huge Games, the 38 Studios’ subsidiary responsible for Kingdoms of Amalur. With many of those imperiled talented people now in new positions, it’s time to wonder where the intellectual property developed over years by Schillings studio will go.

The current owner of the Kingdoms of Amalur, Project Copernicus, and other intellectual property created by 38 is the state of Rhode Island. The state was one of 38 Studios’ primary creditors and it was the inability to repay taxpayer-funded loans that forced the studio’s closure earlier this year. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. (BNY) and the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. (RIEDC) were awarded all assets held by 38 Studios by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath.

Intellectual property is the only asset of worth left at 38 Studios, and this is why BNY lobbied to gain control of it. Where 38 just dismantled, said court papers followed by both BNY and the RIEDC, “all or substantially all of the intellectual property could be irretrievably lost.” Meaning that the art, game prototypes, everything developed in association with Amalur and Copernicus could be destroyed before being preserved on RIEDC/BNY controlled servers.

The IP will now be sold off to the highest bidder to recoup the $75 million lost in loans given to Schilling’s studio.

Who’s buying? Big Huge Games was said to be working on Kingdoms of Amalur 2 pre-production when 38 Studios was shut down in May. Epic’s Mike Capps said on Thursday that Impossible Games will be working on Epic-owned intellectual property when it finishes its first project, Infinity Blade: Dungeons, later this year. Epic is slowly branching out its stable of IPs with Fortnite being the latest. Provided it could get the IP for cheap, it might pick up Kingdoms of Amalur and allow Impossible Games to finish what it started.

Amalur publishing partner Electronic Arts is also a candidate. EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said in July that his company would love to see a sequel to that game. “I think it’s unfortunate how everything worked out [for 38 Studios],” said Gibeau, “At the end of the day we saw a lot of creativity and vision in the team that Curt put together. We thought the game was terrific. It reviewed well. We built a good business there and hope there’s a sequel someday. We’d love to be a partner for that.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com