Every other shrimpgoby lies on the sand at the mouth of its burrow. This one hovers. It hangs ten to fifteen centimeters above the hole, holding position on its pectoral fins, watching, and the moment anything approaches it drops and is gone.
That is also why photographs of it are rare and mostly bad. Its escape distance is several meters, far longer than the other shrimpgobies, so it has usually vanished before a diver has registered what the small white-capped fish was. Getting a picture means finding the burrow, settling down at a distance, and waiting for it to come back up, which takes minutes.
Underneath it, doing all the digging, is a snapping shrimp: in the northern 🌊 Red Sea usually the red-spotted goby shrimp. Neither animal can hold the burrow without the other.
It is small, barely three centimeters, and the IUCN lists it as Data Deficient, which is an honest way of saying nobody has counted it.
- white cap over the head and nape, sharply cut off
- black spot with a pale rim on the first dorsal fin
- hovers 10 to 15 cm above the burrow instead of resting on the sand
- drops out of sight from several meters away
- up to 3.1 cm
Why it's threatened
Major threats are unknown.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
