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I found your beastie. It's an isopod in the family Dajidae, a group of ectoparasites. If you enlarge your image you'll see a cluster of small articulated legs at the head (left) end. This is a female. The males are tiny & apparently live inside the females. Here's an image of a different...

Hi Jovin -- Well, the shrimp parasite is baffling the experts so far. Do you have any other images of it? Can you send me hi-res versions or post them on your website for viewing? I'd like to start a thread about it on a crustacean researcher site in the hope a parasite specialist will take...

Thanks, Jovin. That shows off the spines on the arms & head very nicely. It matches other images of Q. granulosa on the web although who knows if those are identified correctly! Q. coronata looks much the same.

Sorry, it's not a polychaete of any kind. It's the twin-spiralled lophophore of a phoronid worm. do you have any shots showing the whole clump instead of a close-up?

The Quadrella could be a granulosa. Jovin - did you get any pictures that show the carapace & arms in profile? The sea pen crabs are Porcellanella; that particular color morph shows up on a lot of web sites as just Porcellanella sp. there's not enough of the arrow crab to know what it is...

P. tosaensis is restricted to the south China Sea if I remember right. The one you have appears to be P. sarasvati which was recently described and is the one more commonly found in areas like Sulawesi. I've sent off your image to a shrimp expert in the hope he can identify the parasite.

Looks like Lebrunia coralligens. It's an anemone which only lives in crevices. The tentacles come out to capture food but the body stays safe within the crack.

Hi Nick -- Brian emailed me about it. Here's what I wrote him: "Did you actually see the anemone? If not, I suspect the tube belongs to the worm. What you photographed is the hind end of a chaetopterid polychaete, probably Chaetopterus. People thought that one species in particular, C...

Looks similar to other pictures labelled as Astropecten preissei. Judging by the habitat & what's known about other members of the family it crawls around looking for small animals like snails & worms for food as well as scavenging anything dead & dying it can find.

It's the brown alga Dictyota which is well known for being iridescent. A big clump of these in the right light is an amazing sight. There are a couple of other genera in the family - Dictyotacea - which also reflect blue light.

Naw, it's considered very tacky to name something after yourself or a relative with the same name. Maybe someday Arch will have a grad student that needs to make points with him! ;) :lol:

Hi Arch -- Good to have you posting again (or is it me that's been gone?). :smile: If that's a sponge then the fuzzy white things may be a syllid in either the genus Haplosyllis or Syllis. The best known example is H. spongicola which can occur by the tens of thousands in a large sponge. It...

Quick response from Lindsey: " Possibly Macrocypraea cervus but it has not been documented from Honduras ... only Florida, Bahamas, and Veracruz, Mexico. On the other hand Macrocypraea zebra is known from eastern Central America and the mantle is more reminiscent of M. zebra." Some of the...

Definitely a cowry. I've sent it to our collections manager, Lindsey Groves, who's a cowry expert for an id.

Still can't see enough detail of the green patch, sorry. Do send it to Bill - he always wants photo evidence of new locality records and variations/abnormalities.

It does look like a very good match. Without a close up it's hard to know if the green patch on yours is external pigmentation, an internal organ showing through the body, or a parasite. http://www.seaslugforum.net/factsheet.cfm?base=noumflav

Bella's right - that abdomen is really enlarged! No, they don't bite - crabs are pinchers, not biters. Besides, look at the size of the crab compared to the whip coral. Even if it did pinch those claws aren't big enough to hurt.

that's Xenocarcinus tuberculatus. Very common, found mainly on sea whips. Sorry, I don't know anything about its food.

Nope, nope, nope. I'm sticking with Sipunculus as I've seen live specimens before. Take a look at this page: http://www.uco-bn.fr/Galerie_Biologie/Photos/Zoologie/Sipunculiens/pages/Sipunculus%20nudus%20Tournemine(22)%20Juin99.htm Sipuncs are reported up to 70 cm in length.

Actually it's a sipunculid worm, possibly in the genus Sipunculus. The reticulate pattern on the skin is one of the reasons why this group of animals is called peanut worms.