New distributional record of Ragged Sea Hare, Bursatella leachii Blainville, 1817 along western Bay of Bengal

Abstract

Thirty specimens of Bursatella leachii (Ragged sea hare) of average total length as 30.93 mm and weight as 3.33 g were collected from marine cage site, Ramakrishna beach, Visakhapatnam and Krishna estuary, Nagayalanka along Andhra Pradesh coast during July, 2017 and June, 2019. A literature review on the distribution of this species revealed that, this is the first report of Bursatella leachii from the coast of Andhra Pradesh. Earlier it was recorded from the south east coast and west coast of India. This report provides a new distributional record of the species along western Bay of Bengal. A note on the morphological features of this specimen is detailed in this paper.