The first one of these I saw was brought up by a couple of friends in a shelling dredge from more than 65m deep off Makaha. They kept it alive for me to see and photograph. This happened before I started keeping good data, but the date stamped on the slide mount is July 1977. Although alive, the animal, seen below, was a bit battered by its experience in the dredge. I subsequently saw another specimen coming out of the sand at Pupukea, Oahu, on a night dive in about 15m of water. We have also seen this species in the Solomon Islands, Indonesia (Bali) and the Philippines (Anilao).
Created 20 April 2009