Cooking Coconut Crabs on a Fire

So, this sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? But it was a very cool experience. To understand it properly, I think I’ll have to set the scene a bit…

Chagos

Welcome to the Chagos Islands. This little group of islands and atolls is located right in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Somehow it’s owned by the British and has a US military base there… which means you need special access to go. There are no commercial flights in or out, so tourists aren’t really a thing.

The reason we got to go is because they do allow yachts in — if you get permission, pay a chunk of cash, and follow their rules. Agreeing to all of this, we found ourselves sailing to Chagos.

Now, this place is crazy remote. There’s no one living on the islands anymore (if you’re curious as to why, you can read more about it here). The military base is several hundred miles from the atoll we’re allowed to visit, and there are definitely no shops or supplies.

So with this in mind, we stocked up in the Maldives before coming — but that didn’t stop us from doing a little foraging while we were exploring…

Coconut Crabs

Coconut crabs are big. Like, rip-your-finger-off-with-its-claw big. Hence, most of us were too scared to even try to grab them — but there were some brave ones in the family who gave it a go.

Back to the crabs.

Despite the name, they don’t actually eat much coconut. They tend to prefer fruits, nuts, and any sort of fallen tree or rotten thing — kinda gross. But since there aren’t people living on the islands anymore, they roam free, eating anything they can find.

They can grow up to 4kg, and their leg span can reach up to 1m… now do you understand why we were a little skittish? These crabs were GIANT.

Admittedly, we didn’t see any quite as big as 4kg, but there were some decent ones. Coconut crabs live in burrows — big holes in the ground. Some were under fallen trees, others next to crumbling wall ruins. Most of the time we found them wandering outside their burrows, but occasionally you’d peer into a dark hole and see the orange beast inside… definitely no one brave enough to reach in there!

So, that’s a brief explanation of the coconut crab. Here’s how we went about catching them.

Catching Coconut Crabs

All right, time for the risky bit.

We’d wandered around the island the previous day and hadn’t really given the giant crabs a second thought. But returning with some sailing buddies who’d done this before, we thought we’d give catching coconut crabs a try… well, more like watch them try.

Anyway, they had a bucket with a lid, a bit of courage, and off they went. Finn took to the idea immediately and was definitely the bravest of the lot, with the others slowly joining in... I think Archie might've gotten peed on by one!

As we walked around, we saw a few smaller ones on the path as well as some large burrows, but we hadn’t yet seen anything big enough to be worth catching.

Continuing on, we spotted one at the entrance of its burrow. Finn got close and tried to sneak up on it, but no — it retreated, and no one was putting their arm in there! Thankfully, we soon came across what I’d call a medium-sized one. It was backed up against an old ruined wall, and our friend attempted to get behind it. He managed to bend down and grab it without getting nipped — success! We now had one.

We found a few others on that island and I think left with three in the bucket. No one thought about the bumpy dinghy ride back… or the fact that the lid didn’t properly clip on. The bucket was in our friends’ dinghy and they followed us back to the boat. At one point they suddenly stopped and everyone scrambled to the sides… we later heard the bucket had tipped and they’d had the crabs loose in the dinghy!

Cooking Coconut Crabs on the Fire

Right — we could almost eat our crabs!

We got a fire going and collected some old dry palm fronds. Our plan was to get the fire blazing really hot for a few short minutes while the crabs cooked, then pull them off.

Surprisingly, it worked.

The crabs turned even more orange once cooked, and with a hammer and some patience, everyone eventually got to try some. It was good — I mean, maybe not worth all the effort — but yum.

In the end, we only cooked three, I think, and got as much meat off as we could. There was enough to make crab cakes the next day!

So in the end, the cooking part was the easiest — just throw them on the fire!

Summary

And so, that’s the story of how we found and cooked coconut crabs in the remote Chagos Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Would we do it again? Solid maybe. Honestly, it was more about the fun of the hunt and experimenting with how to cook them than anything else.

Have you ever eaten coconut crab? Or tried catching one? Let us know in the comments!