498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



and therefore an easy mark. One of our most startling discoveries 

 of the summer was a fish that lives with an echinoderm. This, of itself, 

 is not unusual, for the eel-like pearlfishes (Carapus, Fierasfer, and 

 Jordanicus) have long been known to inhabit the cloaca of holo- 

 thurians (sea-cucumbers) and the body cavity of Culcita (the cushion 

 starfish) . But our fish was a previously unknown species of clingfish 

 (Gobiesocidae) and the echinoderm host was a feather-star (Coman- 

 thus), a completely unexpected combination. The clingfish was black 

 with a bright yellow stripe down each side, perfectly camouflaged 

 among the arms of its host. 



It was on August 7 that we discovered it, as we were returning from 

 a 2-day trip to Ngemelis. We had stopped in Meharehar, the labyrin- 

 thine lagoon of Eil Malk, to look for future collecting sites and to ob- 

 tain some samples of the lagoon bottom sediments. It was a stormy 

 day with heavy downpours that had hampered our observations and 

 dampened the spirits of everyone aboard the Lenore. We had taken 

 the bottom samples in the rain, and were heading for home by way of 

 the inside route west of Urukthapel when we found ourselves over some 

 coral flats near Ankosu Point, the southernmost cape of Urukthapel. 

 Not wishing to pass up any likely localities, we dropped anchor and 

 went over the side to look around. The water was about 6 feet deep 

 and the bottom was covered with a tangle of staghorn coral 

 (Acropora), most of it lying loose upon the sandy bottom. A few 

 knolls of massive coral could be seen, with chalice-shaped acroporas 

 and sea-fans (Melithaea) growing on them. Here and there, hidden 

 among the corals, we found a many-rayed spiny starfish (Acanthaster 

 planci), which is a real danger to bare feet (even those tough enough 

 to disregard the jagged coral). It is widely feared by the natives of 

 Micronesia, and with ample justification. A friend of ours was vir- 

 tually incapacitated for a week or more by wounds inflicted by this 

 animal, and he was not fully recovered for a month or more. 



Between the coral branches everywhere, and on the coral knolls, 

 the restless, fernlike arms of feather-stars swayed with the rising 

 tide. Because we knew that crinoids are ever-gracious hosts to a va- 

 riety of invertebrates, we collected some of them to find their lodgers. 

 There are usually two kinds of shrimp, a galatheid (or "squat-lob- 

 ster"), and a polychaete worm, all protectively colored to match their 

 host — usually black and greenish yellow in this locality. The first 

 feather-star that Adair Fehlmann collected had some black-and- 

 yellow striped shrimps among its arms. Safely inside a glass vial, 

 they gave us a real surprise. They were not shrimps at all, but 

 fishes — and clingfishes at that — the only ones we would find all sum- 

 mer. A careful search disclosed a number of additional specimens 

 before the current became so swift that we could work no longer. We 



