[efattah]

Hi all,

I need some help to identify a very unusual creature I saw at Whytecliff Park on Saturday March 1st. In ten years of diving I have never seen anything that even remotely resembles this creature.

On a routine dive, I landed on the sand in the bay at Whytecliff at 22m. I crawled down the slope, deeper and deeper. Soon, in the distance, I saw a lone giant cloud sponge sitting near some sort of man made artificial object.

I crawled along the bottom and was approaching the cloud sponge at 32m, when suddenly a white object bolted away from me at an amazing speed. I saw it weave around the cloud sponge and perhaps hide behind it. By now I had been down there for quite some time but felt I just had enough time left to investigate. I slowly crawled around the big cloud sponge, and there it was, motionless, hovering above the bottom. About 12-14cm long, covered with a white exoskeleton, with black eyes. It didn't look alive at this point. I took my snorkel and slowly moved my snorkel in its direction. Just before my snorkel contacted the creature, it 'swam' or bolted away at an amazing speed, and was totally gone. Unfortunately, the creature was so fast that I was unable to identify how it was actually propelling itself. It did not swim like a fish or squid, and it did not seem to flex its body like a prawn or shrimp.

I then swam back up.

You can see a crude drawing of the creature here:

http://www.liquivision.ca/unidentifi...ff_species.gif

I checked my local marine life books and found nothing resembling the creature.

Anyone have any idea what it could be?