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The 10-15 mm-long crustacean has been christened the
"star-gazer mysid" as its eyes seem to gaze permanently upwards.
Similar to insects' eyes, they each look in a different
direction.
"The vivid ringed patterns are thought to be there to make the
eyes appear to belong to a much bigger creature, and hence to
scare off predators," the university said.
It is officially named Mysidopsis zsilaveczi after Guido
Zsilavecz, the underwater photographer who discovered it.
The university's senior marine biologist, Charles Griffiths,
could not identify the species when Zsilavecz brought it to him
and so samples were sent to an expert in Vienna.
Zsilavecz also recently found a new type of nudibranch, a
soft-bodied sea slug, around Cape Town, a city situated at the
meeting of the Indian and Atlantic oceans.
"It's amazing that we're still finding so many new species in
heavily dived waters such as False Bay, right on our doorstep,"
Griffiths said.
(Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Ed Cropley and
Angus MacSwan)
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