【Reading】たらばがに

【English Name】King crab

The tarabagani (red king crab) is written in kanji as 鱈場蟹, its name deriving from the fishing grounds of the tara (cod). Though it resembles a crab in appearance, taxonomically it is a crustacean of the infraorder Anomura, close to hermit crabs; its small fifth pair of legs is hidden inside the gills, so it actually has 5 pairs—10 legs in total. It is a large species with a carapace width of about 25 cm and a total length exceeding 1 m. Dark purple while alive, it turns reddish-orange when heated as astaxanthin develops its color. Its range is the cold-water zones of the North Pacific at water temperatures below 10°C, such as the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. In sushi, the boiled leg meat is used; because it is a hermit-crab relative, the crab innards (kanimiso) are not suited to eating. By the carapace projections, 6 indicates this species, while 4 identifies the abura-gani (blue king crab).