A small crab under a coat of long setae that collects silt and hides its outline.
A small crab with a carapace to about 2 cm, the whole animal including the legs and the claws covered in long soft setae that stand out well beyond the outline of the body. Silt, detritus and fragments of algae collect in that coat, so the crab takes on the colour and texture of whatever ground it has been sitting on and reads as a lump of debris until it moves. Under the hair the carapace is broad with a few blunt teeth along the front edge, and the claws are unequal, the larger one stout with dark fingers.
It is slow and it relies on not being seen rather than on running, which is a useful behavioural character: a hairy lump on rubble that stays put when a light lands on it is usually this. Most activity is at night, when the animals come out onto exposed surfaces; by day they sit under rock and in sponge and hydroid growth.
The genus is large and the species are separated on the arrangement of teeth and granules under the setae, which a photograph does not resolve, so a record from a dive is normally left at Pilumnus. Recorded from the shallows to about 25 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.
