Black Coral Horned Shrimp

Cool shrimp are the name of the game till I'm done with this folder....

Here is a black coral horned shrimp, uncommon and ultra-cool!

Needless to say he wasn't the easiest thing to photo........

AND was not the easiest thing to find, chalk yet another find up for Graham Abbott-Diving for Images!

Here he is hiding from me behind a black coral branch;

He thought he would avoid me by turning upside down, but you have to do more than that to stop these photographers!!!

Best, C

Sweet.

Yup, that says it James.

I think it is actually quite rare, (Periclemenes sp) as far as I know.

More to follow! Carol

Can't wait to see more!

Joe

Can't wait to see more.

Joe

Great find Carol! We found one of those guys at the Wakatobi house reef. They're indeed quite hard to find, and even harder to photograph.

Cor

cor,

Well that makes sense cause Graham used to manage Wakatobi so he would have figured out where to find these! Do you know of any other photos of them? I'd love to see some more to see differences in individuals, etc. Yes, it wasn't easy to photo, it is all the black coral around it, you have to make sure not to damage the black coral branches or stress the shrimp. Graham Abbott helped me with that photo!!!

I did get the full described name and species info, I made a mistake as many others have I gather it is not in the Periclemenes family, Leslie saved me on that one, here is her data from the ID forum (sorry I've never sucessfully used the "quote" button so I've included quotes here):

"The horned shrimp is one of my favorites - Miropandalus hardingi Bruce 1983, family Pandalidae. Lots of people mistake it for a Periclimenes but it's not even in the same family."

Hi Carol, you can see a photo here. Check towards the end of gallery. I havent been able to fix it so I can link to the image directly We found that one at Wakatobi, I think it was the first one we ever found. You can use the zoom button on the right to get a larger image if your monitor isnt large enough to fit it.

Cor

Cor,

Thank you so much for the link to your gallery. I'm glad you just didn't link the black coral horned shrimp pic because it gave me a chance to see your other incredible captures!!!

I really liked your photo of it because there is a different perspective, from the top!!! Also interesting are all the different colors found on these things, I might expect them to exactly match the black coral, but they also have those lovely bits of lavender, etc. I wonder why? Maybe just in case they end up on a different host, like a gorgonian, or does it help camouflage in some other way I wonder???

Anyway isn't it great there are so many of these cool creatures down there just waiting for us to immortalize them in pictures?

And again thanks so much for the look at your gallery. BTW the pics showed up great on my widescreen monitor!! I can't say enough how much I love your photography, you get the essence of the creatures too! It gives me a bar to "shoot" for when I upgrade to better equipment in the future.

Kind Regards, Carol