Hey guys,
I present to you the emperor shrimp (Periclimenes imperator) from my night dive yesterday (I am in Bali).
It is a shrimp, about 1cm long. They really do deserve their name as they are absolutely stunning. Even the way they move in gracious and smooth as if they wold be on wheels.
They usualy live in symbiosis with an other animal of the big blue world. In this case it is a spanish dancer (hexabranchus), a very large speacies of nudibranch, which is kind of like very colorfull underwater slug.
The name nudibranch come from the fact that those slugs have their gills outside of the body: nudi_ nacked; branch_gills.
And it is in the middle of those gills that our pretty little emperor is !
Hope you guys like it.
Here are the wikki page of both of the species we have in the picture if you want to learn more about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periclimenes_imperator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexabranchus
You are more than welcome to have a look at my posts about the tiny beasties of the oceans to see more of my pictures and discover with me this facinating and mostly unknown world.
Thank you, and until nest time, take care of Our Oceans.
