Cape lobster
| Cape lobster | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Homarinus capensis (Herbst, 1792) |
The Cape lobster, Homarinus capensis, is a small lobster that lives off the coast of South Africa, between Cape Town and East London. Formerly included in the genus Homarus, it was given its own genus Homarinus in 1995. Cape lobsters are elusive and rare, with only fourteen specimens being collected between 1792 (the date of its first description) and 1992, including only one female. Following the discovery of three living individuals in 1997, the only living examples in the world, the East London Aquarium now hopes to breed this species.