Spiders blanket shoreline at Great Salt Lake Marina


11 photos
Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

MAGNA — Sightseers at the Great Salt Lake State Park are seeing more than just water. The rocky and grassy sections of shoreline have been overrun with spiders.

“The birds rule the beach. The spiders rule the land,” said Great Salt Lake State Park assistant manager James Wells.

Wells said the spiders — Western Spotted Orb Weavers — are attracted to the shoreline by all the brine flies. Each spring, the spiders start to come out. As the summer goes on, the spiders gorge themselves on all the tiny flies. Then the spiders themselves become meals.

Related:

“The spiders themselves get eaten by various bird species, but as you can see there are so many of them that the birds don’t even make a dent,” Wells said.

Workers at the marina spray to keep the spiders off the lookout and the visitor center, but the spiders are free to roam everywhere else. The spiders are not venomous, but the sheer number of them can be intimidating.

“Certainly along the whole lake, I’m sure we’re talking millions,” Wells said.

The spiders typically thrive until fall, when the first freeze kills the brine flies. Wells said the spiders typically die out by October.

Photos

Related stories

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

UtahOutdoors
Sean Moody

STAY IN THE KNOW

Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

KSL Weather Forecast