shrimp?

We've been diving on St Croix, USVI for 11 years now, and we've never seen one of these guys until tonight. I cant find it in the books we have, and dont have access to our more elaborate library at home. Can anyone ID it?

Julie spotted it at 25 feet deep during a night dive around some fire coral.

Cor

Interesting find; I'm reminded of a type of shrimp I've seen before, but wrong ocean! Was a Lebbeus sp. I've sent it to a shrimp expert, and hopefully will hear back.

Cheers,

Marli

According to my friend Art Anker (a shrimp specialist and maybe the same guy Marli sent it to too ) it looks like Trachycaris restrictus (family Hippolytidae).

Hi Leslie, thanks for the response, also for the spider. You think this is the same species? Looks like it, we saw this one the night after, now that we know what to look for

Cor

Sure looks like it. Was it on the same coral as the first one? then it's probably a host-specific commensal.

They were both on firecoral, but distinctly different shades of green. Well, always nice to find some new stuff. Thanks again,

Cor

The shrimp is siting on sponge. Not firecoral.

Hi William,

Not so fast - while the first photo looks like the shrimp may be sitting on a sponge, the second photo looks like it's sitting on fire coral.

Cheers

James

Seems the shrimp experts agree: Greg Jensen says,

"Trachycaris rugosa, in the same family (Hippolytidae) as Lebbeus."

Marli

The shrimp is siting on sponge.  Not firecoral.

Hi acroporas, although I can see how one may be deceived by these images, the first image is definately not a sponge but firecoral (or at least something very similar to firecoral, I didnt really check the book or anything). I passed the same spot again today and figured id have another look to see if the shrimp is there during the daytime (it isnt), and made sure i wasnt crazy or anything. It's firecoral, most likely branching firecoral or Millepora alcicornis.

From the Reef Coral ID book: "... The hard, calcareous skeleton of fire coral appears relatively smooth. Close observation however reveals fuzzy covering which is actually the colony's tiny, hair-like polyps extending through thousands of pinhole-sized pores...."

When I went and looked again, part of the fire coral had its polyps out, but most of it was tucked in, showing this pore-like (almost sponge like I agree) appearance. This may have been because a fireworm was crawling on it, but it may also have been due to the surge. I noticed a lot of the fire corals had their polyps in.

I made some images to show different distances of the same spot, but when I got home my card had no images on em. Argh. Never had that happen before. I may have taken out the card too quickly after turning off the camera. Really weird cause I distinctly remember going through the images underwater, zooming in to make sure things were visible. So you'll just have to take my word for it

I couldnt find the exact spot of the second image, but now that I think of it, it may have been a gorgonian instead of a fire coral, most likely a sea plume. The base of it. (the image was a vertical, its now on its side and cropped).

Regards,

Cor

Seems the shrimp experts agree:  Greg Jensen says,

"Trachycaris rugosa, in the same family (Hippolytidae) as Lebbeus."

Marli

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To genus at least. Art & Sammy DeGrave both said Trachycaris restricta. since they're both working in the Caribbean region and I don't know if Greg is, I'm sticking with restricta.

Hi Cor

well, Trachycaris rugosa or T. restricta ? we don't know whether they are the same, currently the former is considered to be a synonym of the latter, but I am not sure .. also, a strange distribution pattern: T. rugosa described from the W Atlantic, T. restricta described from Cape Verde and then reported from E Pacific and E Atlantic .. it could be that the E Pacific is different, and so we would have T. sp. EP, T. rugosa (WA) and T. restricta (EA)

could you send me a higher resolution picture ? looks like a juvenile or at least an immature shrimp though

cheers

Art