Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Looking inside corkscrew anemones

Peering inside anemones is always interesting.  However, inside the corkscrew anemone, red and white banded antennae signal that a red snapping shrimp is inside.  Sometimes if you knock on an adjacent rock it will come out to see what is going on.  Alternately, if you stick your finger just in front of the anemone, it will come out and take a look.

This is a corkscrew anemone.


This is a red snapping shrimp, that I found this morning.  One of its claws, the snapping claw, is quite a lot larger than the other. Their snapping apparently  wards off intruders and it helps them catch prey. The smaller claw pinches, which startled me at first, but it isn't very painful. The shrimp was about an inch and a half long.  Photos taken at about 30 feet.




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