Former NBA basketball player for the Chicago Bulls, Luc Longley, has won the EBay auction to name a wild looking red-polka dotted shrimp species. Longley won with a bid of 3,600 Australian dollars (2,900 US dollars): all of the funds go to the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS). He named the shrimp Lebbeus clarehanna as a gift for his daughter, Clare Hanna Longley’s fifteenth birthday.
The shrimp was discovered by Anna McCallum, currently a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, when she was a research assistant on the Southern Surveyor. Found at depths of 100-1000 meters in the waters off the southwest coast of Australia, the shrimp is only 5 centimeters long.
 This unique-looking shrimp awaits a name. Photo courtesy of Australian Marine Conservation Society. |
Rather than naming the shrimp herself, McCallum decided to use the shrimp’s name as a fundraiser for marine conservation.
“You get to name a species and you get to donate to charity at the same time,” Longley who is an advocate for marine conservation told The Scientist. “It’s a fabulous concept.”
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