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.
- 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
