A small red-and-white clawed lobster, deep in crevices by day and out at night.
A small clawed lobster to about 12 cm, orange-red to scarlet, marked with white or pale spots and blotches over the carapace and tail and covered in short pale hairs, with a pair of long, slender, spiny chelipeds carried out in front and large dark eyes. It is neither a spiny lobster nor a slipper lobster: Panulirus versicolor has no claws and antennae longer than its body, and Parribacus antarcticus is a flattened plate with the antennae reduced to shovels. Several Enoplometopus occur in the region and are separated on colour pattern and on the spination of the carapace; a red one with white spots is usually this species, and a photograph that does not show the pattern clearly is better recorded at the genus.
Nocturnal and cryptic. By day it sits deep inside crevices in rock, coral and rubble, often far enough back that a light picks up only the claw tips and the eyeshine; at night it comes out onto rubble and sand to feed on small invertebrates and carrion. It is one of the animals that appears on a night dive over hard ground and effectively never on a day dive over the same ground.
Recorded from about 5 to 40 m. It backs further into the crevice as a light stays on it, so the first look is usually the best one.
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.
