A couple of days ago I used my plankton net and found this marine water mite in the trawl sample. I have not seen one of these before. I don’t know if they have been present but unnoticed in my samples or if it has just appeared.

This organism is closely related to the much more common and numerous freshwater relatives found in ponds and streams. The scientific literature on this species is not easy to find on the internet. I believe that it is from the family Pontarchachnidae which is the only family of the Hydrachnidae occurring in the marine environment.