Family Gorgonocephalidae
Astrotoma Lyman, 1875

Astrotoma waitei Benham, 1909

• Ten miles south of Cape Campbell, 40 to 50 fathoms, March, 1947, entangled in trawl-net; coll. F. Abernethy; five specimens.
• Also same locality, 30 to 70 fathoms, February, 1952; J. A. F. Garrick; two specimens.
• Off Westland, 20 miles west of Hokitika, 216 fathoms, on branching coral: coll. H. W. Wellman; one specimen.

In life, this species is a bright lemon-yellow. The creamy white colour mentioned by Benham is assumed after preservation. Its movements are slow and deliberate, and comprise mostly just coiling and uncoiling the arms in the vertical plane.

The eggs are very large and yolky, and range in size from 60μ to 1,00μ across —indicating direct development, The species may perhaps protect the brood, as page 14I find in one Cook Strait specimen a cluster of eggs in a layer one-deep on the fourth, fifth, and sixth segments of one arm.

The number of arm-spines and their arrangement varies somewhat more than Benham indicates in his original description. Each arm-segment bears on either side from eight to ten short, cylindrical, blunt spines. The spines each terminate in a tuft of glassy spicules. In the outermost quarter of the arm, the spines decrease gradually in number till only one or two remain; the outer (that is. morphologically upper) spines of the segments are the ones that persist to the end of the arm.