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April 7, 2021: Sea Spider

A close-up view of a sea spider, imaged during the first dive of the Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition 2013, while exploring Block Canyon.

Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition 2013. Download larger version (jpg, 1.1 MB).

A close-up view of a sea spider, imaged during the first dive of the Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition 2013, while exploring Block Canyon. Sea spiders are more formally known as pycnogonids because they belong to the class Pycnogonida within the phylum Arthropoda. The look-alike land-dwelling spiders after which they are named are also arthropods, but they belong to the class Arachnida. So, although they are related, sea spiders and spiders are not the same creature.