Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Lincoln (1979) listed four species of Hyale Rathke from British and Irish waters. A fifth species Hyale grimaldii Chevreux has recently been collected from among goose barnacles, Lepas anatifera L., attached to drift timber washed ashore on a rocky beach in Co. Galway, west coast of Ireland. This record was referred to previously in an abstract by McGrath (1984) but no details of the occurrence or material collected was given. An earlier unconfirmed record of H. grimaldii from Scotland is listed among the Reid collection by Sanderson (1973). H. grimaldii was originally described by Chevreux (1891) from two males found among algae attached to drift timber at sea in the Atlantic, north east of the Azores. Subsequently, the species has been recorded on a number of occasions in the Mediterranean (Chevreux & de Guerne, 1893; Cecchini, 1928; Ruffo, 1946; Berner, 1976) and from the Azores, on a coconut cast ashore (Mateus & Afonso, 1974). All records of the species are from objects floating at sea or washed ashore.