Well-known British divers and writer-photographers LAWSON WOOD and LISA COLLINS came across something unexpected while working together to illustrate a new book. Lawson explains
Having lived on Cayman Brac for many years before later returning to Scotland, and written a couple of books on the Cayman Islands, I was approached by Bloomsbury Publishing to write and illustrate with photographs a new book: Marine Life Identification Guide to the Caribbean; Florida; the Gulf Islands and western Atlantic.
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Extending as far east as Bermuda and Barbados, this would be the third in a series of ID books I had done for the company (the first was on the Mediterranean and the second on the North Sea & English Channel).
It looked quite a task but I knew from my time in the Cayman Islands that they were the perfect base for exploring the rest of the Caribbean.
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I had already had published diving guides to Bermuda, Trinidad & Tobago, the US & British Virgin Islands, Cozumel and the Yucatan and the Bahamas, and in the process had amassed a huge amount of photographic material on the bony fish, sharks and rays, seagrasses, algae and the invertebrates – the crustaceans, echinoderms, molluscs, sponges and worms.
My very good friend Prof Mary Wicksten from Texas A&M University had in the past assisted with identifying strange crustaceans for me, so it was only natural that I should call on her expertise once again in my quest to make the new book as comprehensive as possible.
I also called on another good friend, Lisa Collins from Capture Cayman, to ask whether she had any photographs of animals that she was unsure of. In fact, what I asked her for were photos of any weird stuff!
Lisa pulled out all the stops and, despite her very busy work schedule, was able to send me an amazing variety of fish and invertebrates, many of which I had never seen before.
Her selection included pike blennies; the masked hamlet; several types of Elysia sea slugs; shrimps, snails – and one very curious critter that resembled a shrimp and was obviously a member of the crustacean super-family.
Mistaken for a shrimp
Lisa’s photograph was duly sent off to Prof Wicksten, who was able to identify the creature. She also became very excited to discover that the species had never been photographed or recorded in the Caribbean before, let alone in the Cayman Islands.
That it had originally been mistaken for a type of shrimp was not surprising because it is quite shrimp-like in appearance, though you might notice that the largest cheliped (claw) has a distinct hook on its end.
Prof Wicksten carried out further research, and found that one of her colleagues had actually had the species recorded from Cuba only a short time earlier.
There are two other species in the same Pagurotanais family group: P bouryi and P guitarti, though they had previously only ever been recorded from the north-western Atlantic. They are very similar in shape to the critter found by Lisa in Cayman, so there might have been a chance of misidentification, but Prof Wicksten said that it was principally identified by the claw.
There had been no Caribbean record of it, however, so what Lisa had photographed was a new species as far as the Cayman Islands are concerned. The critter was positively identified as a tube-dwelling isopod, Pagurotanais largoensis.
Aggressive nature
This marine isopod had previously been recorded only from the offshore north-east Pacific, and has subsequently also been found along the offshore Florida coast, where it is known to inhabit old tubeworm tubes and small gastropod shells.
Very little was known about the species, and Lisa’s photograph was evidence enough to confirm to the marine scientific world that it existed in Cayman waters.
She had come across the tiny animals while looking for nudibranchs among the algae leaves often found in sandy patches on dive-sites around Cayman. She had also noticed their aggressive nature, as they fought each other and fed prolifically.
Photographing them had proved problematic because of how quickly they moved and how tiny they were. Lisa had thought they were a species of shrimp, and was amazed to learn that they were isopods not described in Cayman waters before.
For any diver interested in finding these critters, Lisa is available for shore-dive guiding to show you where they are. As an underwater photography instructor, she can also help you to photograph them. For more information, please visit Cayman Capture.
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