Pearl in a Red King Crab?! Rouge Regeneration Cell Gone Wild?

by Richard
(Jacksonville, FL)

My wife lives in Anchorage, AK and I and our two girls live in Jacksonville, FL. with me till we move up in a year & a half. Earlier yesterday we bought about 3.5 lbs of Red King Crab Legs from Costco in Jacksonville. So needless to say we like eating what my wife can get in Alaska b/c we miss her. When she eats salmon we eat it here. When she makes pork chops we make pork chops or buffalo burgers or whatever, it's just knowing we're eating a similar meal food keeps our family close. So I'm on the cell phone eating away at some gorgeous Red King Crab and I was eating a large knuckle section. After dipping the knuckle in warm drawn butter I slopped it into my mouth then biting down into a section of the large knuckle I felt a pear shaped ball. I popped out a odd white marble sized pear shaped pearl from the King Crab from my mouth. I was like that's wild and very weird. My wife in Alaska on the cell and we had our computers up web camming, so since I'm like covered in crab juices and butter I asked my wife to google King Crab Pearls ... Voila, it seems others here have had the same experience!

I know crabs have the ability to regenerate their arms should they lose one or have it ripped from their body like crabbers do here for stone crabs in Florida, you're only allowed to take a claw then return the crab back to still be able to protect itself and eat. The claws just regenerate. The King Crab Pearl reminds me of the outside shell, yet really hard and thick. To me it looks like something 'clicked on' genetically in the crab to start a process of regenerating out of sequence from an event. A rouge regeneration cell gone wild that like a irritant in a oyster, creates a pearl.

Looking at the pearl I wonder if I sawed it in half what would I find at it's center? Would it be the sand or irritant causing this event? What would it be? But alas I don't saw it because in it's pure raw state it's quite unusual and beautiful.

Maybe some crazy Chinese homeopathic doctor would give me $200k for this gem thinking that by shaving the pearl into a powder it would heal those with cancer or give a impotent man the virility of a stud horse in spring. One could only hope the value to be that significant right? Well anyway it's fun to dream about my amazing pearl found just yesterday, 3/21/2010.