Saltmarsh Conversations ongoing gallery


About the Crab Burrow Morphology

Meg J. Walsh 2024

My work with the saltmarsh at Pipeclay Lagoon focused on Crab Burrow Morphology. My first encounter with this morphology was through illustrations in the Marsh, J. A. (1982) thesis: “Aspects of the ecology of three saltmarshes of the Derwent region, and an investigation into the role of the burrowing crab H. Haswellianus (Whitelegge, 1889).”

Regular burrow maintenance by these crabs, maintains important chemical pathways between sediment and seawater (bringing deep sediments to the soil surface and acting to regulate the accumulation of toxic substances by enhancing subsurface soil metabolism) – this is a form of respiration in the salt marsh. Blue carbon is the term for carbon captured by coastal and marine ecosystems.

I made casts of abandoned crab burrows, these sculptural objects became remnants of occupation, that make this subterranean space tangible.

In paintings and drawings the burrow shapes are taken directly from scientific diagrams and photographs of the casts. These eccentric organic shapes are of subterranean spaces in the landscape, representing quiet networks beneath the surface, like mycelium, that alter conditions above ground - a calligraphy of the unseen.

Nature provides models of lateral and mutually supportive ecosystems in contrast to vertical hierarchies that are prone to collapse.  These forms resemble fungi, bones, the Starship Enterprise; a skeleton upon which other kinds of forms and forms of otherness might be given flesh. Pelvic bones from which new worlds might be birthed.