Coming up from a night dive the diver from the UK saw lobsters while the French divers saw a langouste and the New Zealander saw cray fish. Did they all see the same animal? Or are we talking about different encounters?

They are all shellfish or crustaceans. Maybe the different languages German, Italian, Spanish, French and English have something to do with it? Or is it like pig and pork. Does it have a different name while it is under water instead of on your plate?

Let’s get to the bottom of it.

Crayfish
Crayfish live in freshwater rivers and lakes and grow to 17cm long. They are smaller. Their walking legs have a small claw at the end. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa the term crayfish generally refers to saltwater spiny lobster. Americans call it crawfish. Some crayfish are known as lobsters, crawdads, mudbugs and yabbies.

Langostino
Langostinos looks like a small lobster and are no more than 8cm long. It is a Spanish word with different meanings in different areas. It is mostly used in restaurants to refer to the meat of a squat lobster, which is neither a true lobster nor a prawn. Squat lobsters are more closely related to porcelain and hermit crabs.

Langoustine
Langoustines belong to a different species than lobster and are about 20cm long. They have the same appearance as crayfish. Also known as the Norway lobster, Dublin Bay prawn and shlobster (shrimp-lobster). It lives in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean and parts of the Mediterranean Sea.

Lobster
They are larger and live in the ocean. They have long bodies and hide in crevices. Three of their five pairs of legs have claws including the first pair, which are usually much larger than the others. Although several other groups of crustaceans have the word lobster in their names, the unqualified term ‘lobster’ generally refers to the clawed lobsters. Clawed lobsters are not closely related to spiny lobsters or slipper lobsters. The most similar living relatives of clawed lobsters are the reef lobsters and the freshwater crayfish.