---
title: Translucent Gorgonian Shrimp (Manipontonia psamathe)
scientific_name: Manipontonia psamathe
common_name: Translucent Gorgonian Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-28T08:45:29.017Z
updated: 2026-08-15T08:29:42.252Z
tags: Translucent Gorgonian Shrimp, Manipontonia psamathe, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/translucent-gorgonian-shrimp
---

# Translucent Gorgonian Shrimp (*Manipontonia psamathe*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 2.5 cm
- **Depth:** 3-60 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** On sea fans, soft corals and whip corals
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- almost entirely transparent, with a fine white line along the back
- long thin legs and a distinctly humped back
- on gorgonians and soft corals, holding the branch with its rear legs
- length up to 2.5 cm

Two and a half centimeters (1 in) of glass with a white line down its back, holding onto a sea fan by its back legs while the front ones pick at the branch.

Transparency is the entire defense, and it is a good one on a gorgonian - a fan is a lattice with water on both sides, so there is no background to be seen against and nothing to cast a shadow on. What gives the shrimp away is the gut and the eyes, the two parts that cannot be made clear, plus a white line that probably breaks up the outline of the body.

It lives on host mucus and trapped particles and moves between colonies rarely; a fan that has one usually has the same one for months.

This is the shrimp most often photographed as a black-background macro subject in this sea, and finding it is a matter of looking at fans instead of at the reef - which is the general rule for everything in this batch.

## Also known as

- **English:** Translucent gorgonian shrimp, seafan shrimp
- **French:** Crevette de Psamathée
- **Japanese:** アカシジカクレエビ, アカスジカクレエビ
- **Chinese:** 指隱蝦

## Scientific synonyms

- *Periclimenes psamathe* (De Man, 1902)
- *Urocaris psamathe* De Man, 1902

## Range

New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/translucent-gorgonian-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*