A rough triangular crab whose chelipeds are far longer than its body and folded like elbows.
A crab with a triangular to rhomboid carapace, granular or knobbed on the surface and often carrying algae, sponge and settled silt, so that a still animal is very close to a piece of rubble. Colour runs cream, fawn, brick and dull red. The carapace itself is modest, to about 5 cm, and the proportions are what identify the family: the chelipeds are two or three times the body length, heavy, ridged and spined along the edges, and they are carried folded back on themselves so that a sharp angle stands out on either side of the animal.
The walking legs, by contrast, are short. The result is a crab that is slow, that does not run when found, and that relies on sitting still. The heaviest members of the family, such as Daldorfia, are lumpy enough to pass for coral rock even at close range.
They are found on rubble and coarse sand, on the lower parts of slopes as often as in the shallows, and generally by movement rather than by outline. Species are separated on the carapace ornament and on the spines of the chelipeds, and a photograph will usually take a record only to the family or the genus. Recorded from about 5 to 35 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
