They come in various shades of brown, green, tan or white.
Although they look like a rock they are really a colony of living organisms.
Found in most reef environments especially on the seaward slopes, between 15 and 75 feet.
The valleys between the ridges are lined with polyps that will extend at night to feed.
They are 1 1/2 to 2 in long. Their walking legs and parts of their body are translucent. The third pair of their legs are enlarged and equipped with large claws. These claws are prone to breaking off but can be regenerated.
They are cleaner shrimp and can be found perched near openings on the coral or sponges. They wave their long white antennae to attract the fish they clean by removing bacteria and dead skin etc.
Oh look… there’s a customer now.
If a diver slowly extends a bare hand toward the shrimp… they will sometimes climb on and attempt to clean those fingers.
They are very common but their coloring and tiger-like bars is something that always catches my eye.
I find them to be a surprisingly difficult subject to photograph… something about that transparent tail makes for a lot of pixtures that are not quite in focus.
But this guy, a Sharptail Eel does a pretty good impression of one.
They are generally a grayish color w/ white body spots that often have a yellowish center.
We see them when they are foraging in the open. Moving snake-like along the bottom in search of food.
They move fairly quickly with a lot of poking their heads into things. So I am always thrilled when I can get a shot that includes their head.
Most of the ones that we saw on this year’s trip to Bonaire were mature enough that they no longer had that feather like look.
That is until we saw this guy. He was even good enough to twirl a bit… to really show off his featherness.
