Mediterranean Slipper Lobster

• It is protected in several Mediterranean countries, and taking it by diving is banned across much of its range.
• It is able to prise limpets off the rock, something very few predators manage, thanks to the strength of its front legs.
• Its larval stage, the phyllosoma, is a transparent, flattened sheet that drifts for months in the open sea and looks nothing like the adult.
• It has no claws or long antennae: its antennae are transformed into two broad, flattened, shovel-shaped plates, which give it an unmistakable silhouette and its Spanish names of cigarra de mar (sea cicada) and zapatilla de mar (sea slipper).
• It digs with them and also uses them to push its way through; and with its legs it forces open the molluscs it feeds on, above all limpets and mussels.
• When fleeing it swims backwards with flicks of its abdomen, as lobsters do.
• Its flesh is excellent and has been heavily exploited, to the point that across much of the western Mediterranean it is now rare. Its slowness and its habit of gathering in caves make it trivially easy for a diver to catch.
• It is protected in several Mediterranean countries, and fishing for it is banned or heavily restricted in Spain, Italy and France.
• The IUCN classifies it as Data Deficient, which reflects how little is known about the real state of its populations.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (crustacean)

Habitat and environment

Caves and hollows on Mediterranean rocky bottoms, from 4 to 100 m

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Scyllarides latus