We report on the marine fouling and fouling release effects caused by variations of surface mechanical properties and microtopography of engineering polymers. Polymeric materials were covered with hierarchical micromolded topographical patterns inspired by the shell of the marine decapod crab Myomenippe hardwickii. These micropatterned surfaces were deployed in field static immersion tests. PDM...

Several crustacean fisheries have experienced significant outbreaks of disease that have damaged their industries. Not only do fisheries suffer from direct losses to pathogens, such as disease-induced mortalities or reduced product value, but they can also incur indirect losses such as stunting, castration, and increased risk of predation. In some cases, the indirect losses can be substantial, ...

1 year and the receiving system batteries are replaced by divers at intervals of up to 4 weeks. In field tests, crab (Cancer pagurus L.) and lobster (Homarus gammarus (L.)) activity was monitored at an artificial reef for 14 months. Examples of the type of information acquired are presented to illustrate the capabilities of the system and potential applications are discussed. Limitations of dig...

Our research explores the application of Inductive Logic Programming to a new domain involving decapod crustacean claws. We find that we can distinguish dactyl shapes by automatically extracting relational features that describe their underlying spatial structure. We first use medial axis techniques to find the shock graph of each dactyl outline, which is then converted into a first-order logic...

Only 15 families of decapod crustaceans living as larvae in oceanic waters of northern Chile survived the strong impact of the El Niño 1982-83 event. A key considering only their most conspicuous external characters, without specimens dissection, is given. These families represent one third of the total reported for the area living under “normal” oceanographic conditions; and at the level of sp...