Britain's biggest crab emerges from the deep

It is something you won't often see: the giant box crab, Paramola cuvieri, which is the biggest crab occurring in British waters. It is normally found at very great depths, up to 9,000ft down, but this specimen, with a claw-span measuring more than a metre across, is now on view in the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall. It was caught by a

Cornish fisherman, Matthew Keast, who was fishing for turbot 80 miles west of the Scillies. "It looks like something from another planet and has caused quite a stir among all the staff here," said the aquarium curator Matt Slater. "It's one of the oddest crabs I've ever seen. It has weird eyes on stalks which look like bicycle handlebars and a strange pair of backward facing pincers."