An interesting word. We usually use "fantastic" to mean
great (like a great window cleaner). We continue to hear that sense
of the word when we read it in the poem, but the dominant sense of "fantastic"
in this line is strange or unworldly (as in "literature of the fantastic"),
a now less frequently used sense of the word. So the greatness of
the crab is undercut by a sense of its oddness. Another instance
of the chain of associations around strength
and vulnerability (compare oddly muscular).