Baby Squat Lobsters of Wake Atoll
During the NA181 expedition exploring the deep sea around Wake Atoll, Corps of Exploration member Paula Rodriguez Flores of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology sailed as part of the Science Team. Paula specializes in studying crustaceans, the superfamily Galatheoidea of porcelain crabs and squat lobsters, in particular. Luckily for her (and for us), we spotted multiple baby squat lobsters while diving on seamounts with our ROVs! Despite their names, these small, flat marine crustaceans are actually more related to hermit crabs than lobsters. Thanks to our pilots and video engineers who worked extra hard to get zoomed-in shots of these tiny crustaceans. Hear more from Paula and the team in this video about the adorable squat lobsters of the deep-sea!
Ocean Exploration Trust's Exploration of Wake Island's Deep-Sea expedition NA181 is supported by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute.
Exploration of Wake Island's Deep Sea
Located roughly midway between the Hawaiian and Mariana Islands, Wake Island is one of the most isolated land masses on Earth. While there have been some recent expeditions to this remote region, the vast majority of the 407,241 square kilometers of seafloor surrounding Wake remains unmapped and uncharacterized, thereby representing one of the most poorly surveyed areas under US jurisdiction.
