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| Platymaia maoria, Challenger Plateau 2007. |
Dell's spider crab (
Platymaia maoria Dell, 1963), is a smallish deep-sea crab (to ~69mm across the carapace), found in water ~270–950m deep, which is essentially the upper to mid-continental slope. They are found around the northern part of New Zealand's North Island and across to eastern Australia. This kind of distribution is common to many deep-sea species, some of which can have nearly global distributions.
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| Platymaia maoria, Challenger Plateau 2007. |
Dell's spider crabs tend to turn up as
bycatch in
deep-water fisheries for orange roughy (
Hoplostethus atlanticus Collett, 1889). They're quite fragile little crabs, so I can't imagine that too many come up in one piece. This particular Dell's spider crab came from Challenger Plateau, west of New Zealand in about 500m of water. It was taken in a research trawl, as part of the Challenger Plateau leg of the
Oceans 20/20 research voyages of 2007.
Not much appears to be known regarding the ecology of this crab, but it has been speculated (mostly by me) that they might be scavengers.
More info:
NIWA common deep-sea invertebrate guide:
http://deepwatergroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Tracey-et-al-2007b-Deepsea-Invertebrate-Guide-f.pdf
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