Mediterranean slipper lobster

This is the odd one out among Mediterranean lobsters: a broad, flattened animal the colour of wet terracotta, reddish brown to orange, with no claws at all and no long whip antennae. Instead it carries two stubby, flattened antennal plates at the front that look like shovels or bulldozer blades, and its back is studded with hard tubercles that often carry a fur of bryozoans and algae. Adults are usually around 30 cm long, with big ones reaching 45 cm and roughly 2 kg.

Around Malta and Gozo it lives on rocky reef and in the caves and deep crevices that riddle the limestone, from about 5 m down to well past 100 m. Divers most often meet it between 15 and 50 m, tucked head-first into a hole with only the front plates showing, or clinging upside down on a cave ceiling. It is nocturnal and solitary, coming out after dark to crunch mussels and other shelled molluscs with powerful mouthparts.

It is one of the animals Maltese and Gozitan cave dives are known for. Billinghurst Cave off Reqqa Point in Gozo has a long association with them, and they also turn up in the overhangs at Ċirkewwa and in the darker recesses of wreck superstructure. Heavy collection has made large animals scarce, so a good one is a genuine find rather than an everyday sighting.