More new species than you can poke a pair of forceps at ...

... have been discovered in the waters around Panglao island in the Philippines. Although the material hasn't been studied thoroughly yet, the experts are estimating that field work has turned up between 150 and 250 new crustaceans. That would be impressive enough. But there may be ten times that number of undescribed molluscs.

"To put it in perspective, the whole decapod crustacean (shrimp or prawn) fauna of Japan barely exceeds 1,600 species.

"The Mediterranean (300 million hectares) has 340 species of decapods and 2,024 species of mollusks."

Read the story at Seed Magazine. Or go one better and have a look at these links kindly provided by Budak: a photo album from the expedition and the official home page.