Continuing a Guardian series on remarkable deep-sea species: a variety of yeti crab that lives by hot vents
, a new Guardian Seascape series will profile some of the most recently discovered weird, wonderful, majestic, ridiculous, hardcore and mind-blowing creatures. They reveal how much there is still to learn about the least known environment on Earth – and how much there is to protect. The scientists considered naming it after the James Bond actor Sean Connery, says Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist at Portsmouth University .
A few years ago, when asked by a journalist which of his natural history curiosities he treasures the most, David Attenborough said he was especially fond of the Hoff crab encased in resin, like a paperweight, that sits on his desk. It was a gift from Roterman and a reminder, he said, that animals exist that have until recently had no contact with humans and have no concept of our existence.
They form mini cities under the sea, co-existing in a tiny area where it’s warm enough to live but not hot enough to boil.Life for female Hoff crabs is quite different. With clutches of fertilised eggs stuck on to their bodies they cannot afford to hang around the vents where the seawater is low in oxygen and their young would soon suffocate. So expectant females crawl away into the cold dark a few metres from the chimneys.
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