As promised, my shrimp photo collection was accumulating again, this time spanning two cameras! It is always a good idea to look in anemones to find symbiotic shrimp and these are plentiful on all of the reefs of the San Blas. When transparent, shrimp can be quite hard to find. I usually look for movement, since their instinct is t0 swim over as cleaners when something hovers nearby.
Some shrimp are as small as 1/4” long and squat shrimp are rarely over 1/2” total. They are also called sexy shrimp because of the way they sway their bodies, tail up. Supposedly, they are emulating the movements of their resident anemone, but they will spook if you get too close. Speedy little buggers ~ when they move it looks like they’ve teleported to another space.
This spotted cleaner shrimp was relatively big at about 1” long, this time I couldn’t entice him out of his anemone.
Sun anemone shrimp are usually found on sun anemones, but also take up residence in giant anemones as well.
This one was the big daddy of any I’ve ever seen, approaching an inch long and dwarfing his anemone-mates.
I recently came across what appeared to be a juvenile sun anemone, an interestingly brilliant yellow/green color laying on the sandy bottom. It already had a few resident sun anemone shrimp.
The other sure bet is to peek under a rock ledge to find the long white antennae of banded coral shrimp.
The ubiquitous sharp nose pufferfish are still around to photobomb a majority of photos!
Recently, I’ve found a new place to search for shrimp and have seen two new species (for me). The first time I was cameraless but Patricia got a good picture of a pair of peppermint shrimp around 1/5" to 2” big. So when I got my replacement camera and in keeping with peaking into tube sponges, I came across another shrimp of the same size hiding deep in a tube.
It turns out to be a two claw shrimp with banded pincers and an interesting spine down the middle of its big, clear eyes. It’s always fun to come across new finds… not to mention the strange beauty of nature.
