Page 40 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #06

SPINY LOBSTERS

ake 18 bounding strides down your street and
the odds are it will look much the same at the
end as it does at the beginning. Yet that is as
far as I had to go to enter a completely alien
world. Two rusty boilers standing bolt upright
under 18m of water are all that remain of
Tthe wreck of a steamship that hit a mine in
December 1917 and sank off Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula.
All manner of weird and wonderful marine life has
colonised the artificial reef that this wartime disaster
created, yet at the surface there’s no clue it even exists.
In March I joined a dive survey team from the
Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the Cornwall Inshore
Fisheries Conservation Association (CIFCA) on the
wreck. Our aim was to investigate the wholly unexpected
reappearance of the European spiny lobster, also known
as the crawfish, which had all but disappeared by the end
of the 1990s, after a just few decades of overfishing by
divers and the introduction of new monofilament nets.
This handsome crustacean, with its impressively long
antennae and heavily armoured body, has a wide range
from northern Scotland south to the Mediterranean.
Although it favours warm climes, currents generated
by the Gulf Stream flush our western shores with ON CLOSER INSPECTION,
warm water from as far away as the Florida Straits,
enabling it to thrive along British and Irish coasts. A THESE ANIMALS HAVE HABITS
handful of faded photos of divers proudly displaying
giant specimens hark back to a time when the species STRANGE ENOUGH TO RIVAL ANY
SCIENCE-FICTION CHARACTER.
supported an important UK fishery.
DISTANT RELATIVES
Spiny lobsters are a feisty family of about 60 species
worldwide. While they resemble lobsters, it’s worth Above: extremely If that’s not enough to get them out of trouble, true
remembering that, in the natural world as in the human large antennae to their name, spiny lobsters are protected by a hard
world, looks can often be deceiving. Spiny lobsters are in and lack of front exoskeleton covered in forward-facing spines that make
claws are the
fact only distantly related to true lobsters. them so awkward to handle that only the most tenacious of
tell-tale signs of a
Among other things, spiny lobsters can be distinguished spiny lobster when predators bother with them at all – most notably, us.
by the absence of large front claws, or chelae. These it is tucked away. Various species of spiny lobster are loved for the simple
clawless, or achelate, crustaceans venture out at night and reason that in many parts of the world they’re considered
Clockwise from top r ght: Tom Daguerre; blickwinkel/A amy; age fotostock/A amy; Sue Da y/naturep .com; John Yarrow
use their large, stalked eyes and super-sized antennae to ‘good eatin’. In the Bahamas, ‘lobster season’ kicks off
great effect, scouring the seabed for prey – molluscs and with a full-on carnival. In Brittany, they are highly prized
echinoderms such as starfish – as well as carrion. and known locally as langouste, while in Western Australia
Once spiny lobsters find food, they methodically shovel it a similar species, the western crayfish, represents one of
into their mouths using spiky front legs. If threatened, their the best managed and most
spring-loaded abdomens allow them to make a startling valuable pot fisheries in
escape, with just a flick of a tail. the world.

LOBSTER LOOKALIKES

Confusingly, a number of COMMON LOBSTER NORWAY
quite diferent crustaceans HOMARUS GAMMARUS LOBSTER
are all called lobsters. Here Also known as the European NEPHROPS NORVEGICUS
are three others found in lobster, this is the species for which Also called the
British waters. the European spiny lobster is most Dublin Bay prawn or langoustine,
easily mistaken. It is similar in size, but popularly sold as ‘scampi’. This
but sports a pair of spectacular crustacean is much smaller than
front claws. The left claw is used the European spiny lobster, typically
to crush prey and the smaller right growing to 20cm. It prefers silty
claw has a sharp cutting sediments, digging burrows that it
edge for slicing up food. leaves only to forage and mate.

40 June 2018