A Diver in Tahiti Posts the First Parribacus holthuisi Slipper Lobster to iNat! - Observation of the Week, 3/1/22

Our Observation of the Week is the first Parribacus holthuisi slipper lobster posted to iNat! Seen in French Polynesia by @vetea_liao.

“I've been fascinated by nature, in particular in marine biology, since my childhood when I learned how to spearfish with my father,” says Vetea Liao, who grew up in Tahiti. 

I had to learn the local names of the fishes and understand their behavior. And then later during my studies I learned about the whole reef ecosystem and the classification system and I was even more fascinated. For one of my first jobs, I participated in a massive biological inventory on the island of Moorea, the Biocode Project, and was amazed by all the little organisms that we found and I was able to talk to many taxonomists. This experience definitely hooked me!

During one of his forays into the ocean, Vetea witnessed daytime spawning by the coral species Porites rus (below), which he says is unusual because most corals spawn at night. After more investigations into this behavior, he found it was quite predictable, so “with few friends we were able to confirm that this spawning for this coral species was synchronous over two different islands, within a few minutes [of time]. Then we decided to start a small scale citizen science project to explore the spatial scale of this synchrony and found that it happened at the same time on seven different islands separated by 500 km.”

In 2021 they created the Tama No Te Tairoto (“Children of the Lagoon”) association to scale up the project even further and in 2021 found simultaneous spawning over ten different islands. “We are a group of young marine biologists,” he explains. “most of us are amateur photographers and we also use our photos to show our followers the wonders of our lagoon and rare or intriguing marine species.”

Slipper lobsters like Parribacus holthuisi are, of course one of those intriguing marine species, and Vetea says the one shown above was found when the group went night snorkeling.

I invited a few [members] to the lagoon where I grew up but I hadn't been there myself in a few years. Unfortunately the general environment of this area has been degraded and overfished but two years ago some regulations on fishing were implemented. I was interested to see if there was any visible impact on the fish population, and fortunately while snorkeling we saw this beautiful slipper lobster that was different from the usual one (Parribacus antarticus). I posted it on iNaturalist because I saw that there was no picture of Parribacus holthuisi.

More closely related to spiny lobsters than “true” lobsters (Family Nephropidae), slipper lobsters (Family Scyllaridae) have distinctive flattened antennae, which Vetea captured so well in his photo. They live in warmer waters around the world where they dwell on the seafloor and eat mollusks, worms, and other invertebrates. They’re edible but haven’t been the target of large scale commercial fishing. Parribacus holthuisi grow to about 14 cm in total length. 

Currently working with Direction des ressources marines for the local government in Tahiti, Vetea (above) used to work in Moorea for the Gump research station (run by UC Berkeley) and for the CRIOBE research station (French CNRS). And of course in his free time serves as president of Tama No Te Tairoto. The group uses Google tools for their work, but Veta says “when I discovered Inaturalist, the tools and the community associated, I was impressed.”

I use iNaturalist to reach out to a wider community of specialists. We do have a few local guide books for underwater organisms but there are still some species to discover or to identify. And when local specialists can't identify something to the species level, the iNaturalist community is a very useful resource.

(Photo of Vetea by Anne-marie Trinh. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

- Vetea and his group haven’t published their findings yet, they’ll be turning to it after the observation season is over. He tells me they hope to make an international call for further study of this behavior.

- There are, of course, videos of coral spawning, here’s one from PBS Nature.

- Take a look at the diversity of slipper lobsters on iNat!

Posted on March 1, 2022 11:04 PM by tiwane